


Die Nasty Dynasty

by baeconandeggs, Klavier



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Love Letters, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Relationship(s), References to Depression, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 06:41:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18733702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeconandeggs/pseuds/baeconandeggs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klavier/pseuds/Klavier
Summary: Chanyeol sits up. “Don’t laugh. I make music in order to be heard, okay? I want to be known and understood. Music is the easiest way to present myself. Does that make sense?”“Yeah, you’re an attention whore,” Baekhyun says, but the words wobble and give away his raging heart.Or, the end of the world meets two strangers, a dog, and a guitar.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: baeconandeggs/the mods is/are not the author/s of this story. Authors will be credited and tagged after reveals.** The celebrities' names/images are merely borrowed and do not represent who the celebrities are in real life. No offense is intended towards them, their families or friends. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this fictional work. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  **Author's Note:** first of all let me say a HUGE THANK YOU to my beta N! you my friend are awesome and I'm so glad we were matched! thank you for taking this journey with me!!  
> I've always wanted to write post-apocalypse and this was a lot more fun than I expected, so thank you to the mods for running such a large and well-organized fest every year. very excited to be a part of it! please enjoy!! (edit: you can follow me on twitter @ klavvrites!)

“And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.”    
—Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

_ Dear Chanyeol, _

_ You were right. I hate saying that, I know it would inflate your enormous fucking ego. But I was wrong about everything. Even the dog. Especially the dog. _

_ I just spent so long mourning, then forgetting, then punishing myself for healing, that I became a victim of escapism. I made myself cruel.  _

_ That was the wrong choice. Life is already cruel. What happened to us is awful and terrifying and sometimes it keeps me from getting up in the mornings. You were right — I’m scared. Acknowledging that makes me feel better. Writing to you, even if it’s pointless, makes me feel better.  _

_ I miss you so fucking much. There are so many things I left unsaid, things I hate myself for keeping quiet. I just wish you’d wake up and hug me. Maybe one day we can cook your mom’s lasagna recipe. I’ll pick a whole bouquet of forget-me-nots for you. Anything. _

_ I’m writing this in case you don’t wake up. Or you wake up looking different. I need to say thank you, Chanyeol. You kept me alive. You were my light and love. And I’ll never forget you. _

_ Yours truly, _

_ Baekhyun _

  
  


The Business Management midterm continues as normal when the first emergency alert goes off. Baekhyun doesn’t check his phone. Then his neighbor’s phone goes off. So does his professor’s. The girl two rows ahead is emptying out her pockets looking, while rambunctious Seulgi in the corner desk is making a quiet call under her sleeve, until suddenly everyone is texting instead of writing about manufacturing firms and it’s incredibly distracting. 

So Baekhyun checks his phone.

BBC BREAKING NEWS ALERT: INTERNATIONAL STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED. He clicks the red banner. A VIRUS PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT TO BE LINKED TO SWINE FLU SPREADS RAPIDLY THROUGHOUT ASIA AND THE AMERICAS. UNITED STATES CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION ADVISES SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. 

Baekhyun looks around. Nobody’s screaming, but several people are whispering. Is this real? How are they supposed to react? Professor Goh is scrolling through his own phone and, uncharacteristically, paying no attention to the hall of chit-chattering students. There are 46 questions left on the midterm when Minghao in the last row stands up. 

Everyone turns around. Minghao freezes, backpack half-slung over one shoulder, and tilts his bowl hat before exiting. The double doors slam behind him.

It’s like permission was granted from the Dean himself. Whisper volume goes up. A distant helicopter noise sets off a mini wave of students leaving, whereas some don’t even look up from their papers.

Maybe this is really it — the end times. Maybe sleepless imaginings and drunk hypotheticals are about to become horrifically relevant. Millennials are obsessed with the end of the world, it’s true, and Baekhyun can’t in good conscience let an opportunity like this pass. He’ll be the first to admit his decision-making skills are lackluster, so when he stands from his seat in the middle of the room, he clears his throat. Loudly. A hundred eyes whip towards him. 

“Professor Goh,” he calls, “I think it’s time to go.” 

Then he walks to the front of the room and turns in his half-completed midterm, because Baekhyun is an asshole but not an idiot. If this is a false alarm he wants the points, at least. The last thing he hears are the whispers spiking energetically in volume right before the door slams.

It’s already chaos outside. Baekhyun takes a deep breath and dodges three girls sprinting down the hallway. Traffic congestion snakes through the sprawling green campus. Fuck Business Management, honestly, but where does he go now? The grocery store? He should stock up on water and canned goods, right?

A weird gurgling sound makes him turn. There’s a man in black collapsed at the end of the hall, and before he can think better of it, Baekhyun’s jogging over. “Hey, are you alright?”

The guy chokes. His extremities twitch. It’s altogether disgusting until Baekhyun in a flash recognizes him as the sashimi chef from the school cafeteria — and that makes it  _ worse _ . The guy thrashes out with one hand and Baekhyun runs.

Okay, so this is not a stock-up-on-food apocalypse scenario, this is a steal-weapons-and-run apocalypse. Baekhyun’s thought about the end times, okay? Especially since skimming the twitter reports about climate change that were released a couple months ago. First stop on the apocalypse survival tour: the school museum.

On his way he calls Kyungsoo.

“You really should’ve picked up this time, asshole.” Baekhyun rounds the corner of the physics building to see three more people twitching on the ground. “Oh, fuck. Just meet me at the museum as soon as you can.” He trips gracefully over a morphology textbook and faceplants in the grass. “I’m serious, okay? I don’t know what’s happening. Be safe.”

He’s almost at the entrance to the museum when a girl on the ground gets up. She’s moving very oddly, like a newborn paper crane, so he pauses to see if she needs help. Then her neck audibly snaps. Her head swivels a complete 180 degrees to look at Baekhyun with empty, clouded eyes.

So he screams like a baby and runs inside.

_ Holy fucking mother of god shitfuck, _ is his only thought. He pushes the ticketer out of the way and ascends two flights of stairs to an empty gallery with the grand prize — a 600-year-old katana from feudal Japan. This is what he’s here for. Baekhyun rips it off the wall and vaguely registers that the helicopter noise has been replaced by a distant, continuous scream. 

Katana clutched in one hand, he stands on a 400-year-old wooden chest to peer out the window. 

The student union is on fire. Its glass ceiling is shattered and melting in ugly lumps, while thick black smoke billows into a larger cloud gathering over the city — where dozens of smaller fires work their way skywards in a spiderweb of smoke. Students are running in ones and twos, backpacks swinging, and he watches each go down one by one, tackled by a twitching assailant. There’s blood everywhere. On the grass, between bench rails, all over the stairs to the auditorium. Only then does he realize what’s happening.

This is a  _ zombie  _ apocalypse. 

Baekhyun locks the door. He slides against the wall until he’s squatting, ass on the ground, with his knees pulled tight to his imploding chest. He calls Kyungsoo again. It doesn’t even connect. 

He closes his eyes and tries to think.

There are a few pros. He has:

A weapon.

Temporary shelter. 

Two bottles of water.

Food in the form of six packets of raisins, one packet of instant ramen, and three boxes of matcha pocky he bought for Kyungsoo simply because they had Park Chanyeol’s blown-up face on the front. Baekhyun actually hates the matcha flavor.

There are also a few cons. He has:

No cell service.

No idea where Kyungsoo is.

No way to get back to the dorm.

Overall, not a great situation. Baekhyun opens his backpack and scavenges for something more substantially useful. There’s a seventh packet of semi-crushed raisins, along with his Art Design homework, but nothing worthwhile. 

He is so fucked.

Baekhyun spends the first day of the end of the world sitting on a wooden chest with one sweaty hand on a katana, watching the city wilt. He hasn’t prayed in a long time, but he does when the sun sets. He traces the jasmine petals on his phone background and waits for a message. At some point the chorus of screams tapers off. The electricity goes out. He cries. A little at first, then more. His calls to Kyungsoo never go through. He thinks about calling his parents, but decides he’d rather not hear their voices.

At 2 AM, his phone dies. 

He wakes when there’s a thump at the door.

Baekhyun falls off the chest and twists his wrist on the hardwood. Fantastic. He doesn’t even remember falling asleep, but the katana is abandoned on the ground and his eyes are sticky with exhaustion. Retrieving the weapon, he inches toward the door.

“Hello?” He rests a hand on the knob. “Is someone there?”

There’s no answer. It could be the ticketer from downstairs, seeking more secure shelter. Or it could be… a zombie. But he’s gotta have hope, right? It could be someone in need of help. Plus, his stomach is so painfully empty that he’s gonna have to open the door in search of real food eventually.

Baekhyun braces himself and opens the door.

It’s a girl with long red hair whose head snaps up. Baekhyun has enough time to register her bared teeth and bloody, ripped cheeks before she launches herself hands-first at his face. He acts on complete muscle memory — the katana comes up and stakes her clean through the chest. 

Baekhyun screams, dropping the katana and with it, the girl’s destroyed corpse. “Oh God, oh God, oh, fuck, fuck — ”

There’s a skinny guy behind her that Baekhyun doesn’t see until it’s too late. He leaps and knocks Baekhyun into the wall, teeth going straight for his forehead. Baekhyun’s hand comes up so fast he knocks the guy’s head sideways and it sticks. An awful, decaying smell comes off his ripped clothes. Gray matter streaks over his cracked forehead. Baekhyun casually throws up on himself and shoves the guy away. He grabs the katana with trembling hands and channels every minute of kendo practice he’s ever had.

Then he strikes. 

It’s over quickly and Baekhyun is alone in the hall, sobbing on his knees and trying not to hyperventilate. Those were people. He  _ killed _ those  _ people _ . This is worse than Train to Busan. Oh, fuck, he’s like that idiot baseball player who doesn’t make two days, that’s Baekhyun and he’s actually going to die, he knows it. He’s gonna die anonymous and alone, so incredibly alone, that no part of his remaining life will be soft or kind.

That realization kinda fucks him up. 

By that he means, he retreats into the gallery and locks the door. Then he builds a barricade with thirteen pieces of ancient Japanese furniture, chugs some water, and waits for death.

On the first day of university, Baekhyun meets his randomly-selected roommate in the sticky, overcrowded lobby of a brick-and-mortar dorm just south of campus. It’s the climax of summer. Strategic floor fans circulate stale air through the conversation. That’s what Baekhyun remembers most, in hindsight — the sweat in strangers’ creased elbows, his dry lips, the shining bridge of Kyungsoo’s nose.

“Hey,” Kyungsoo speaks first. “You’re Baekhyun, right?”

He’s standing behind a shirtless, wandering toddler, so Baekhyun almost misses him at first, only called away from his suitcase by the soft sound of his name in the cacophony of family noises. It seems like every parent in the city has a freshman moving into this dorm today. Baekhyun came alone.

“That’s me!” Baekhyun lifts his hand, unnecessarily, while he waits for the toddler to wander by so he can push his suitcase closer to his new roommate. That’s definitely the guy he linked up with on Facebook, though he doesn’t look much like his photos. At all.

Kyungsoo is dressed down in a soft green shirt and cargo shorts. His shoes are large and clunky, black laces on a black toe cap, and he stands with an aloof nonchalance so genuine that Baekhyun is immediately intimidated. This guy is cooler than him. This guy is cooler than he’ll  _ ever  _ be. He’s also — in a proper, old-fashioned sense — incredibly attractive, with a wide face and cropped dark hair. Baekhyun swallows hard and hopes, somehow, the emails were wrong and he has a different roommate. Someone more approachable. 

Then Kyungsoo smiles, and his whole face changes into one of gentleness. Awkwardly he smooths his short fringe and says, “It’s nice to meet you,” in that same, soft voice, while Baekhyun’s heart jumps into his throat.

“Yeah, same to you. I’m just happy I made it here from the train station, you know.” Baekhyun gestures to his own feeble biceps and laughs, half exhausted and gunning for an easy self-deprecating joke.

“You walked from the station by yourself?” Kyungsoo raises his eyebrows. “It’s so hot out.”

“Yeah, it’s gross,” Baekhyun says, but then Kyungsoo is grabbing the handle of his suitcase and forging a path toward the elevator through crying family huddles. A fan sputters and dies out on the other side of the room while Baekhyun considers the unsurprising realization that he is  _ really  _ into well-muscled guys. Stocky guys. Guys that look like his new roommate.

He catches up in a few quick steps and presses the vintage-style button before Kyungsoo has to. “Whoa, thanks, but I got it, I was just kidding. It’s not too bad.”

“This is stupid heavy.” Kyungsoo doesn’t let go of the handle, but he gives the suitcase a little jiggle. The veins in his hand shift. “Do you have all your books in here?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“I still need to get to the bookstore,” Kyungsoo says as the elevator arrives and spits out two sets of teary-eyed parents. One woman checks Baekhyun with her purse as she exits and he rubs the offended spot on his shoulder. It’s unlawfully hot. The university should be closed today, not rounding up all its newest prey and forcing a cohabitational stew.

Baekhyun helps Kyungsoo push his suitcase in the elevator and presses the fourth floor button. “I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to. I mean — ” He shakes his head and scratches his neck with one finger. “Don’t feel obligated.”

“I don’t.” Baekhyun smiles. “Really. When did you move in, anyway?”

“This morning.” 

“Did your parents help?” Baekhyun asks, then wants to bite off his tongue for being nosy and indelicate with his new roommate. They’re in the throes of besties at first sight, conversation is  _ fragile _ .

Kyungsoo shrugs. “No. My brother came, but he just pretended like he wasn’t crying.”

Baekhyun is so grateful for the lack of response. He huffs a pseudo-laugh. “That’s almost worse. I’m just glad my parents aren’t here to antagonize me.” 

He’s even gladder they aren’t here to pick a fight with each other. Imagining his tiny, loud-mouthed mother having an episode and screaming at his father, in the middle of a sobbing sea of mothers and fathers… well, that’s a queasy image. 

Based on the way Kyungsoo raises his eyebrows, quick and then down, suggests he knows exactly what that means. It’s like they have an inside joke already. If their first bonding moment involves shitty parents, Baekhyun won’t be disappointed. At least it’s something in common, and the least Mr. and Mrs. Byun can do for their son is be cheap fodder for jokes.

Kyungsoo is neat when he changes the subject. “Me too. For my parents, anyway. Are you going to the welcome week speech tonight?”

The elevator dings. They step into the hallway of their new life, hands skimming over one another on top of Baekhyun’s suitcase, with sweat drying at the napes of their necks, as their conversation starts to feel comfortably cool. Baekhyun likes him instantly and irrevocably. He doesn’t yet know how much.

  
  
  


Five days into the museum stakeout, Baekhyun’s eaten every crumb of those pocky sticks and is no closer to death. His body proves stubbornly resistant to the idea. Three days ago, there was a breach in security and five zombies smashed through the window, but Baekhyun hacked them with the katana until he saw nothing but blood.

He didn’t cry that time. He didn’t feel anything.

But now he’s out of food and, tragically, still alive to feel hunger. Idly he stares out the window at the campus convenience store. There’s probably food there. He hasn’t seen a sign of the living or the undead since that break-in. So Baekhyun makes what might be his last decision — he’s moving to the convenience store.

For some stupid reason he takes his backpack and homework. Habit, probably. The katana’s weight feels natural in his hands now, not unlike his kendo sword, and he bursts out of the gallery with arms swinging.

There’s no one there. 

In fact, the entire museum looks empty, and Baekhyun exits without a second glance for the ticketer. Campus is eerily silent. There are no bodies. Whatever fires began on D-Day are nothing but ash now, and he covers his nose against the pungent, decaying stench of the earth. He moves quickly. Dried blood flakes off the grass as he runs.

Baekhyun’s almost in the clear when a gurgling noise cuts him off. A zombie in track pants, with a bowl hat still affixed to his head somehow, lurches from behind a dumpster. Twitching arms reach for Baekhyun’s neck. Suddenly he recognizes this guy — it’s Minghao from his Business Management class.

It takes every heartless inch of him to cut Minghao down with a katana through the neck. Baekhyun doesn’t flinch when the blood gets all over his hands, his shirt, his neck. Like the blood is a numbing agent cleansing all human emotion from him. Well, he’s better for it. Survival means shutting down.

Baekhyun tugs the katana back and shoves through the barricaded convenience store doors, leaving the twice-dead body to crumple — 

Only to be cleaved in the stomach with a mosquito racket.

“Jesus  _ fuck  _ ow,” he gasps, falling to his knees.

“Don’t move,” a low voice says, “or I’ll kill you right there.”

Lungs destroyed, Baekhyun looks up into a face he would recognize even through a pixelated, faraway fancam. It’s a face he’s been forced to stare at every time he walks into his roommate’s bedroom. It’s a face he jokingly printed on a coffee mug once. 

He struggles to his feet, one arm clenched around his aching abdomen. “Park Chanyeol?”     

“Oh, hi, are you a fan?”

The guy absolutely beaming in the middle of an abandoned wasteland is  _ definitely _ Park Chanyeol, top-100 rapper meets singer-songwriter and blossoming actor with a tattoo fetish. Whom Baekhyun knows way too much about. Chanyeol’s face, even bruised across the jaw and paler than a whitewashed fansite photo, reminds him so much of Kyungsoo that Baekhyun can’t breathe.

“Not really.” He leans on a fully-stocked shelf of condoms. “My — wait, what the fuck? Why are you here?”

His presence effectively smashes the surreal idealism of convenience store safety. Is this a fucked up dream? Is Baekhyun hallucinating? Chanyeol frowns and extends the the mosquito racket like a hammer aiming for a nail. “First prove to me you’re not a zombie.”

“I’m not a zombie.” Baekhyun spreads his arms wide. Then he remembers he’s absolutely drenched in blood/puke/pocky crumbs and slowly retracts his arms.

“No bites under there? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking sure — “ Baekhyun lets the katana clatter to the ground in frustration. What’s the fastest way to prove his liveliness? He’s not about to strip naked in front of a semi-stranger. Even if that stranger isn’t technically a stranger. God, this is weird. 

He leans forward on his tiptoes. “Could a zombie do  _ this _ ?”

Baekhyun does a kendo drill he knows looks impressive, with an arching downward swipe. He throws in a roundhouse kick at the end for good measure.

Chanyeol lowers the racket. He looks stunned by that display of athleticism, but that might be the swelling in his bottom lip. “Probably not.”

“I’m not a zombie. Do you mind if I crash here for a while?” Baekhyun retrieves the katana. “Wait, it’s not like you own the place. I’m staying.”

“Okay, I guess.”

That settles that. Baekhyun drops his backpack on the counter to inspect the goods. Almost everything is still intact and functioning like the armageddon never happened. Chips, ageless pastries, and trail mix line the shelves, while a dysfunctional mini fridge boasts stale beer and spoiled milk. In the corner is a dollar section with plastic household items that should never be made out of plastic. Like razors. Overall, it smells rancid, but probably no worse than Baekhyun himself smells. 

There’s no evidence that anyone lives there apart from Chanyeol’s physical presence. Now that Baekhyun has a lungful of good air and he’s not bargaining for his life, he gets a good look at Chanyeol. The guy is wearing a ripped Tommy Hilfiger jacket and equally ripped jeans. His knobby knees stick out and advertise a whole wealth of scrapes and scars, but otherwise he’s tall, rugged, and handsome.  _ Damn _ , does he look straight out of a music video. No wonder Kyungsoo came back from his concert starry-eyed.

No. No thoughts of Kyungsoo allowed.

Chanyeol gestures to the ageless donuts. “Sorry I hit you with a mosquito racket. Help yourself to whatever food you need.”  

“Do you have any sake?”

“No, just beer.” Chanyeol shoves his hands into his pockets. “You don’t want, like, real food?”

Baekhyun waves him away and descends upon the minifridge. “Yeah, yeah, just — liquor first.” He cracks one open and sniffs. Definitely stale. Maybe he’ll get one bubble. He doesn’t care, anyway, these are his last few days alive and he feels a detached nostalgia for the smell of Jongdae’s couch. Baekhyun downs the beer in one go. “Wow, that’s disgusting.”

He catches Chanyeol’s eye. The guy is watching him with a timid smile, the kind belonging to confused extroverts, and it’s equal parts cute and revolting. Baekhyun  _ knows  _ this guy has abs. Not to mention he raps about having orgies and doing drugs and  _ being sad _ , which are not hobbies well-represented by the awkward, smiley boy leaning on the candy bar rack.

Chanyeol bites his lip. “What… did you say your name was?”

Way to be polite to the last human he’ll ever see. He clears his throat. “Sorry, I’m Baekhyun.” 

They shake hands. Baekhyun claws through a bag of potato chips and, mouth stuffed full of salty deliciousness, asks, “So, how’s the new album coming?”

That wipes every hesitation right off Chanyeol’s face. He beams again, leaning the racket against a display of granola bars and sliding his ass onto the counter. His legs dangle. “It’s going great! Or, it was, you know, before.” He shakes out his hair. “I’m thinking of calling it Cold Fight, since all of my singles are influenced by Chris Martin, but — I thought you weren’t a fan?”

Baekhyun waves a hand dismissively. Salt crumbs fly from his fingers. “Everybody on campus knows you.” 

“Oh. Cool.” Chanyeol relaxes in the conversation and nibbles on an Almond Joy. “So you went to the university here? Before?”

It’s tempting to correct him —  _ I still go to the university  _ — but it’s really too late for that. So Baekhyun just nods. “Sophomore.”

“Cool. What was your major?”

“Floral Management.”

There’s a long pause filled with chip-crunching. Chanyeol’s legs stop kicking. Baekhyun purposefully crunches louder and gears up to defend his life’s work, because apparently even after the world ends, people can still judge him for “wasting an education on flowers and fancies,” as his mom liked to say.

But Chanyeol doesn’t laugh. He chews on his lower lip. That shouldn’t be attractive, but Baekhyun has just spent six days in solitary isolation and then killed the first humanoids he met afterwards. His gaze sticks on Chanyeol’s mouth. His swollen lower lip is kinda hot, in a rugged, Indiana Jones way.

“Like, flowers?”

“...Yeah.”

“Like, managing flowers?”  

“Floral Management,” Baekhyun sighs, “is a dual degree in floriculture and business that covers the growth, attainment, care, marketing, and sale of flowers. I take classes in microbiology, economics, hydrology, and some other shit. Yes it is a real degree. No I do not know what I want to do after graduation, thanks for asking.”

_ That’s  _ when Chanyeol laughs. “God, that makes me so glad I never went to college.”

“And now you’ll never have to!” Baekhyun spreads his arms wide, smiling and not feeling an inch of it. “Welcome to the rest of our lives.”

It’s meant as a joke, but Baekhyun unintentionally sobers the room. He finishes the bag of chips and reaches for a granola bar. Then two. Chanyeol just watches. His eyes are so focused that Baekhyun feels like he’s in a museum, pinned behind glass, and his ears flush hot under the attention. A part of him feels guilty even though he’s not doing  _ anything _ .

On his third granola bar, he gags on dry peanut butter chunks and asks, “How long have you been here?”

“Just a night.” Chanyeol swings his legs again. His eyes are a little disconcerting the way they eagerly track Baekhyun’s hands and fingers.

“Where were you before?”

“Holed up in my tour bus, mostly.” He reaches backward and absently retrieves an acoustic guitar from behind the counter. It’s a beautiful creature, probably worth more than Baekhyun has in his bank account, and there’s a rainbow quarter note sticker on the body. “I slept through the worst of it, and when I woke up, I was alone in the bus and just drove until I ran out of gas up the road.”

Immediately Baekhyun hops around the display to press his face against what little glass is visible. Chanyeol boarded up most of the doorway — a smart move, he’s gotta admit — but there’s still a crack through which Baekhyun himself had wiggled. Sure enough, a tour bus is parked down the street with two wheels on the sidewalk.

As if sensing his judgement, Chanyeol says, “I don’t have a driver’s license, okay?”

“Neither do I.”

“Well,” Chanyeol relaxes into the body of his guitar. “That definitely doesn’t matter now.”

Then Baekhyun has a  _ thought _ .

“You’re planning to stay here, right?” Baekhyun whips back around. He’s urgently interested in Chanyeol’s answer, because if this bubblegum popstar decides to be territorial, Baekhyun  _ will  _ duke it out. This is prime real estate. He won’t hesitate to kill Chanyeol for the rest of the granola bars. 

But Chanyeol instantly follows his train of thought and nods. “I have nowhere else to go, and there’s food here. But you’re more than welcome to stay! I don’t own it!” He stretches out a hand, as if placating a feral animal, and Baekhyun idly wonders what his own face looks like to warrant that kind of reaction. “Actually, please stay, I would love the company. It’s been lonely.”

Even though sharing resources is the easiest option, Baekhyun kinda wants to kill Chanyeol anyway. His skinny legs and gentle hands, curled gracefully around the guitar, are no match for ravenous cannibals should they attack. He’s obviously just a liability. Regardless of movie-star looks or Baekhyun’s strange guilt, he knows — honestly, in his heart of hearts — he doesn’t care that Chanyeol is human. He would kill him. After the past week, he doesn’t care.

That’s why he ultimately accepts the offer. He doesn’t care enough to kill Chanyeol right now. If that changes later, well, he won’t hesitate, but for now, Baekhyun shoves a jar of lollipops to the ground and slides onto the counter next to Chanyeol. They watch the shattered glass tinkle over the tiles. He enjoys the colorful light caught in each shard, trapped and glittering, like a collection of miniature, screaming suns on the otherwise filthy floor.

Baekhyun tilts his head back and looks sideways at Chanyeol through his fringe. “I’ll stay, too. Just please for the love of God don’t play Wonderwall.”

Instead, Chanyeol hits the opening chords of It’s The End Of The World by R.E.M. 

_it’s the end of the world as we know it / and i feel fine_

 

The first time Baekhyun shotguns a beer, he’s halfway through freshman year and half in love with his best friend.

It’s a windy Tuesday night and the breeze keeps rattling tree carcasses against the window on the second floor of Jongdae’s loft apartment. Baekhyun knows it’s raining, even though he can’t hear it above the pop-ballad playlist blasting downstairs, because his hair is frizzy at the ends. Kyungsoo is notably absent tonight. 

He’s already drunk when he clunks downstairs after using the bathroom, but he snags another beer from the fridge and settles into Jongdae’s side on the couch, hip-checking aside two girls with warm eyes fixed on Jongdae’s profile. This is his fish to fry tonight.

“Why didn’t Kyungsoo come?” Baekhyun tilts his head to Jongdae’s bony shoulder and dislodges the host from whatever tepid conversation he’d been nursing with Sehun. Baekhyun’s voice catches on the edge of a whine, and he smothers it with another swallow of beer. 

“Ask him, he’s your roommate.”

“He’s  _ your  _ best friend.”

Jongdae cranes his chin to face him fully. “Is Baekhyun a sad drunk because his crush stayed home?”

The words have a lightning-like, sobering effect on Baekhyun. He sits up straight and curls both hands entirely around the cold beer to station himself in the moment — and not think traitorously of Kyungsoo’s baby face and overall delectability.

His face flushes. “No.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Jongdae unearths a PS4 controller from beneath silk throw pillows and begins loading the Spider-Man game he knows like the back of his hand. Several acquaintances from the music program glance in their direction, but no one complains about Jongdae’s lack of host etiquette. That’s the privilege of renting a loft apartment in the city center. Be carefree enough, be generous enough, and the masses will love you materialistically.

Baekhyun’s annoyed at the posers and feels a weird sense of pride in being the one chosen by Jongdae to multiplayer with him. But he’s also still fighting a blush and hyper-focusing on anything in the room to keep from overthinking his entire relationship with Kyungsoo.

The game loads. He trades a half-empty beer for a controller. Baekhyun sends Spider-Gwen careening ass-first off a skyscraper. “Is it really that obvious?”

“I don’t think he knows, but — ” Jongdae surreptitiously scans the room, probably confirming Sehun’s dawdle at the fridge, out of earshot. Someone changes the playlist and his voice is almost stolen by a sudden bassdrop. “Everyone else does.”

The idea is frightening but unsurprising. Baekhyun’s affectionate, okay? He’s an open book with an open heart and open arms. At least he is for Kyungsoo. His fingers go slack as Spider-Gwen faceplants into a wall. Her exaggerated, animated breathing makes Baekhyun a little dizzy, and he enjoys jamming the top arrow and sadistically ramming the wall for a few seconds while he considers how to respond to that.  _ Everyone knows. _

Baekhyun bites his lip and lowers his voice. “I want to tell him.”

From his peripheral, he can see Jongdae glance over. “Are you sure? You guys live together.”

“I have to be authentic to myself,” Baekhyun says, which is an odd way to phrase it, but he can’t just say,  _ I want to follow my heart.  _ That’s who he is deep down — an original romantic, passionate and progressive — but this is Jongdae, and his emotional capacity might be limited while drunk and distracted by a Spider-anything. 

But he’s pleasantly surprised when Jongdae pauses and slaps Baekhyun on the back. He’s a little rough, but he’s smiling like he’s proud. “If you really want to do it, I support you. But I have no fucking idea what he’ll say.”

Baekhyun can’t resist pinching his armpit. He laughs above Jongdae’s petulant groan, obnoxious as ever, and tosses the controller on the couch beside him. “Don’t let me chicken out. Remind sober me tomorrow, okay?”

“Fine.”

He takes a deep breath, tasting cold air in the bottom of his throat, like someone’s opened a window in the next room. Welcoming the freshness, he stands and stretches and reaches back for his neglected beer. Jungkook from the goldfish-eating frat jostles him while walking by, in a friendly way, like they’re not peripheral peers at best. College parties are weird. No wonder Kyungsoo rarely comes.

Baekhyun tilts the neck of his bottle toward Jongdae’s limp, couch-shaped body. “Okay. I need more alcohol before I come up with a plan.”

“Shots?”

“Shot _ gun _ ?”

Jongdae grins. He uncurls from the cushions, says  _ fuck yeah _ , and suddenly they’re on a disastrous trajectory toward alcohol poisoning.

Except it doesn’t get that far — it never gets that far — because two hours later Baekhyun’s up to his elbows in suds, doing the dishes on autopilot while he’s browned out and exhausted, as final stragglers call farewells from the front door. Jongdae starts snoring in the loft bed. Baekhyun really considers crashing on the couch.

Instead, he walks home. Baekhyun is careful to open the door gingerly so not to wake his sleeping roommate, fingers cold on the knob, teeth chattering after only minutes outside. He’s mildly proud of himself for not getting lost. It’s 2 AM and he’s drunk, okay? He could’ve been pathetic and called Kyungsoo for assistance, but he didn’t.

He’s in the process of tugging off one shoe when someone says, “How was the party?”

Baekhyun gasps and flinches. The shoe goes flying. It knocks over a vase of mostly-dead sunflowers, water cascading over the counter, and sends violent handfuls of glass tinkling to the floor.

“Holy shit,” Baekhyun whispers. 

He turns. Bed-headed Kyungsoo has one hand over his mouth and his shoulders are shaking gently. For one heart-stopping second, Baekhyun thinks he’s crying, but there’s a huff of air and Kyungsoo practically collapses into laughter. He bends over and braces both hands on his plaid pajama pants.

“Oh god,” he whispers. “Baekhyun, you’ve been home for  _ five seconds _ .”

“Hi?” He can feel himself smile, sheepish, incapable of resisting the happy golden glow that accompanies Kyungsoo’s giggles. The intoxication of joy is worse than drinking. “The party was great, thanks for asking. How was your day?”

“Somehow, it just got better.”

Baekhyun has a feeling that conversation about his feelings will go okay. 

  
  


The convenience store is a pre-war building, two storeys tall, with a rickety wooden door atop a rickety wooden spiral staircase that spits into a flat, empty roof. Chanyeol has a cardboard-and-sheet bed set up in the upstairs room. That circular office has two tiny windows through which sunlight and dust enter. It’s riddled with paperwork and a useless computer, but also stocked with boxes of instant ramen, chips, and actual water bottles.

Baekhyun sets up a second cardboard-and-sheet bed in that room. He can’t sleep for shit. The night creeps heavy through the window. The sky is darker than Baekhyun can ever remember without streetlamps or headlights to cut it, and he has to turn away from both the window and Chanyeol to relax. He imagines home.

On nights like these — nights that commandeered Baekhyun’s sanity and took him on anxious recollections of missteps and misspoken words — he used to sit up and turn on the fairy lights in their dorm room. Kyungsoo would roll over on the opposite bed and ask, “Are you still gaming?”

Now Baekhyun closes his eyes and focuses on the memory of his apartment bedroom, its familiar shadows and bumps, until he falls asleep. The night is restless and littered with nightmares. He’s  _ lonely _ .

The universe gets a little bit shittier when Baekhyun is awoken at the crack of dawn to a great shuffling. He cracks one groggy eye to see… an ass. A particularly flat one, actually, aimed right at his face. What the fuck?

He rolls over for a better look — at Chanyeol, not his ass — and fails to compute the scene. Chanyeol is on a yoga mat. Stretching. Breathing deeply. The look of the concentration on his face is so comical that Baekhyun almost laughs. 

But the more pressing fact is that it’s dawn and Baekhyun is  _ awake _ . He groans so that Chanyeol knows exactly how displeased he is. Then he rolls over seeking the return of sleep. Already he’s reconsidering the decision not to kill Chanyeol. 

An hour later, Baekhyun pulls himself from the stiff cardboard and walks downstairs. Yesterday he’d cleaned his shirt with a bottle of water on the roof, but the stains probably won’t ever come out, and he rubs them now absently as he casts his eyes over the first floor. It’s suspiciously quiet. Chanyeol is sprawled belly-down in a pool of sunlight, both feet smashed underneath a shelf of salsa dip. He’s scribbling in a notebook.

“What are you doing?” Baekhyun rubs his eyes.

“Good morning.” Chanyeol looks up and smiles. When he does that, his eyes go crinkly and lopsided. It’s unfairly cute. “I’m writing a song. I think it’s gonna be called Hymn for the Zombies, in the style of Coldplay’s Hymn for the Weekend.”

“I thought you were a rapper.”

“Well, yeah.” He scratches his hair sheepishly. “But that’s all label stuff. This is just mine. Maybe for SoundCloud.”

“That’s… cool.”

Chanyeol deflates a little at his tone. Normally, Baekhyun would feel a little bad for being so dismissive, but, again, he doesn’t care. The whole popstar thing has worn off. He shuffles to the display of granola bars. “We should take inventory and set up a rationing system.”

“Okay,” Chanyeol agrees, ripping a piece of paper from his notebook, “We can use this.”

“I’ll start over here,” Baekhyun mumbles.

It takes the whole morning. When the milky sun moves too far for Chanyeol to enjoy its warmth, he hops upstairs to wrap sheets around his shoulders, even though Baekhyun can’t feel the chill. Especially with half of the doorway boarded up. Baekhyun just tosses another brown apple into the pile of rancid perishables and moves on.

He starts calculating before Chanyeol finishes with the boxes upstairs.

“Sixty-nine more boxes of granola bars up here,” Chanyeol calls down. “That’s the last of it.” He plods downstairs with sheets in a disarray, nearly tripping on the last step. “What’ve we got?”

Baekhyun slams the pen down. He buries his head in his hands at the front counter. “Four months.”

“Oh.”

“That’s when we run out of food. The water will be gone in three.”

“ _ Oh _ ,” Chanyeol frowns. “I was hoping for longer.”

_ Hoping for longer _ ? Is he serious? Baekhyun takes a deep breath and bites his lip to keep from screaming. His life has an expiration date and he just wants to… run. To hide. To take his katana to every living creature in the city and inflict as much pain as he can. Every iota of suffering that he feels should be multiplied, expanded, and shoved down the throat of all others who still have hope. Why are they even alive? What’s the fucking point?

Baekhyun slams his fists on the counter so hard that pain erupts from his fingers. Definitely sprained. He shakes them out, the bones smarting, and hisses.

“Whatever,” he grits through clenched teeth, “the zombies will get us before then.”

“No, they won’t.” Chanyeol steps carefully over the sorted piles of food and stops across the counter. He’s emphatic and earnest. “We have time to find more food. Don’t give up.”

“There’s no more food. We’ll never harvest enough.” Baekhyun runs hands through his hair even as the word  _ harvest  _ pings something deep in the back of his mind. He’ll think about it later. For now he’s already moving on, shoes scraping the tile, inspecting the shabby cardboard taped against the front door. “We should finish patching this up, anyway.”

“I’ll help.” Chanyeol comes up beside him smiling. “We can move the shelves in front of the doors, too.”

So they work. Mostly in silence. Sometimes Chanyeol will chime in with a comment about how much he misses Spotify or fried calamari. Night falls and Baekhyun’s stomach is grumbling by the time they finish, but the front doors are slightly more protected than before. Certainly no skinny assholes like Baekhyun would be crawling through again. For better or worse, they’re alone in the convenience store.

There’s evidence that Chanyeol began a life here that first night, before Baekhyun barged in: against the back wall there are remnants of a constructed drum set made of overturned plastic shelving units and chopsticks. It doesn’t really look like anything until Chanyeol sits at the center, hands spread and chopsticks comically at the ready. He gets one look at the unadulterated disdain on Baekhyun’s face and flees the scene. 

But Baekhyun can still recall the image of Chanyeol at a professional drum set, muscles bulging out of his tank top, sweat dripping onto the instrument. He banishes the memory of replayed music videos. That Chanyeol is so far removed from this Chanyeol, it hardly even matters.

Baekhyun retires upstairs with his daily allowance of food: one bag of chips, two cookies, half an instant ramen packet, and a bottle of water. He’s a little annoyed that Chanyeol follows and sits directly across from him on his own bed, sheets still draped around his shoulders like a cape.

He munches away while Chanyeol plucks at the guitar. Is that supposed to be less annoying than the drums?

“Do you… have to do that?”

Chanyeol very seriously says, “Yes. Or I’ll die.”

“The guitar keeps you alive?”

“The  _ fun  _ keeps me alive.”

Baekhyun crumples his empty plastic bags and tosses them into a dark corner. There’s still trash in his backpack from those six days hunkering in the museum, so he turns his bag upside down and dumps the plastic in a collection in the corner. He’ll figure out what to do with it later.

Then Chanyeol’s hands still over the guitar. “Are those the matcha pocky specials with SM Entertainment?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you buy them before?”

Baekhyun collapses backward in bed. He rubs his eyes. “Yeah, why?”

“Why did you choose three with  _ my  _ face?”

_ Shit _ . Baekhyun is suddenly and viciously angry at Chanyeol for being nosy, for being famous, for being alive. He doesn’t want to explain that he bought the pocky for his dead boyfriend. He pulls the sheets over his face.

“Those were the only kind they had,” he lies.

But Chanyeol is satisfied with that answer. He shuffles on his cardboard and resumes plucking chords. Baekhyun lies awake for hours, long after Chanyeol curls up and his breathing regulates, staring at the puke-green fabric over his face and trying to swallow all the anger living inside him. 

This time he thinks back to his last kendo practice, in the stuffy basement of the school gym, loathing the time commitment required for collegiate athletes and complaining to no one, “I’m getting more action from my training stick than my boyfriend.”

Baekhyun wishes he could have a good, honest match right now, with something to hit and somewhere to unleash himself. If only.

  
  


When Baekhyun does wake up he’s bone-tired and inexplicably sore. He hears the same noises as yesterday: shuffling mat, deep breathing, popping bones. He sits up. Chanyeol’s ass is, once again, directly in his face. Dim gray light moves through the window. It’s raining outside and there’s a faint smell of mold.

“Seriously?” Baekhyun nudges Chanyeol’s waist with a foot until he topples over. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“Rude, dude.” Chanyeol, sprawled on the floor, kicks out in retaliation. “You’re ruining my zen.”

“You’re ruining what’s left of my life.”

“Why are you being so dramatic, I’m not  _ that _ loud — ”

Weird tension from a day of awkward co-habitation just shatters. Suddenly they’re wrestling and the leftover grogginess evaporates from Baekhyun’s body. Residual anger sends him crashing into Chanyeol and they roll across the floor, limbs tangled, lashing out with uncoordinated elbows and knees in close range.

He’s never fought hand-to-hand before. Pain laces across Baekhyun’s abdomen. He lands a hit on Chanyeol’s chin and hears teeth clack together. But the horrible truth is that Chanyeol’s limbs are so long and flexible, he easily squishes Baekhyun against the cardboard, and the fight is over as rapidly and strangely as it began.

Panting, Baekhyun lets his head fall back and knock against the floor. He lost, and yeah, that’s embarrassing, but as the anger fades, he feels… a little better. Like this scrimmage took the edge off. He goes limp.

Cautiously Chanyeol releases his grip on Baekhyun’s wrists. He doesn’t look angry, but there’s a tension in his shoulders that might be frustration, and he doesn’t immediately roll away. They just look at each other, pressed chest to chest, and Baekhyun’s ferociously aware of how fast his heart is pounding. Something in the air changes and his face goes hot. He can’t move. He doesn’t want to move — this is the first time in days his whole body is quiet and he feels like adjusting his hips against Chanyeol’s dominating frame —

Then there’s a huge shattering of glass from downstairs.

“Shit.” Baekhyun shoves Chanyeol off and reaches for the katana. “We have visitors.”

“What was that noise?”

“I’ll look. Just stay here.”

Chanyeol hesitantly grabs the mosquito racket. “No,  _ you _ stay here. I’m bigger.”

Seriously? Baekhyun spares five seconds to close his eyes and take a deep breath. He descends on the staircase one step at a time, ignoring Chanyeol’s breath on the back of his neck. He’s light on his feet and the katana is steady in his hands. Whatever’s down there, he’s ready for it.

Except that when he peeks down, Baekhyun sees three zombies climbing through the destroyed carcass of the front door. They’re sniffing. All the cardboard has been scratched down, all the shelves pushed over, and now the first floor is exposed to the elements and whoever fancies a drop-in. He zeroes in on the neat piles of food. Their only chance at survival is being overrun. 

He needs to be cautious. He needs to creep gently downward and strike while he has the element of surprise…

Then Chanyeol’s hand comes down on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I got this.”

Chanyeol launches himself off the third step and thunders onto the battlefield. All three zombies snap towards him. The closest, a larger man with facial hair and missing fingers, lunges forward with bloody teeth bared. Chanyeol screams and bats him away with the mosquito racket. His arms tremble.

Baekhyun really has to do everything around here, doesn’t he?

He scrambles down the staircase and makes quick work of the bearded zombie, checking Chanyeol out of the way with his hip and going straight for the attacker’s neck. The next two are quicker. A girl whose features are destroyed with a mask of dried blood knocks Baekhyun off balance. His elbow smashes into a shelf of chips and sends the neat arrangements into crinkling disaster. He cripples her with a clean swipe through the chest. On instinct alone he pivots and attacks the last one.

It goes down easy. Everything stills. Baekhyun wakes back up in his body, skin buzzing, bloody hands clutching the hilt of the weapon, and realizes that Chanyeol still hasn’t stopped screaming.

He whips around. “ _ Shut the fuck up _ , man, do you want more to show up?”

Chanyeol claps his hands over his mouth. The mosquito racket clatters on the tile. His eyes are huge and a full-body tremble goes through him when his eyes pass over Baekhyun’s body. Lights catch in his eyes, like he’s about to cry.

But Baekhyun doesn’t know how much time they have before the next hungry fucker wanders in, so he ignores Chanyeol’s delicate constitution in favor of dragging the bodies out the front door and tossing them in the adjacent alley. The street is stiflingly quiet. He hurries back inside and starts reconstructing the cardboard barricade with extra tape. All of yesterday’s work is basically undone.

He glances back at Chanyeol, more out of habit than concern, and stops.

Chanyeol is crying in earnest now. He’s on the floor, knees and palms pressed to the tile, and his face is twisted with pain. His eyes are fixed on the long bloodstain leading out the front.

Against his better judgement — the priority should be  _ fixing the gaping hole in the door  _ — Baekhyun crosses the room to kneel at his side. “Are you injured?”

“No,” Chanyeol says, sniffling. 

Baekhyun fidgets. He can’t deal with his own emotions, let alone a stranger’s. But he and Chanyeol are stuck together until they kick the bucket, so he supposes they’re hardly strangers now. Maybe acquaintances.  

He goes for a distraction plea. “Then can you help me with the door?”

Chanyeol sighs, long and shuddering. “Yeah.”

He’s slow to move, but eventually joins Baekhyun with another arsenal of cardboard. They work quickly. Chanyeol’s hands shake at every gust of drizzled wind. The outside world is wet and disgusting. At least they manage to patch the holes before it gets even wetter and more disgusting. This time, Baekhyun destroys a shelving unit upstairs and layers the cardboard with actual wood and nail.

“Baekhyun.” Chanyeol hands him another slab of wood. He pronounces his name like it’s savory and filling. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Will you tell me about yourself?”

At that Baekhyun pauses. He should be too hungry and tired to humor Chanyeol, but he replies anyway. “I’m Byun Baekhyun. Nice to meet you.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Chanyeol rolls onto his back and pillows his head in his hands. The floor is clean, scrubbed with bleach from the dinky restroom, but he’s careful not to touch where the blood was. “You already know me. I don’t know anything about you besides your major.”

Baekhyun hammers the nail harder than he needs to. “I don’t want to talk.”

“It doesn’t have to be serious,” Chanyeol mumbles, “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

That makes Chanyeol sit up straight. His hair flops over his eyes. “Wait, really?”

“I  _ told _ you I was a second-year in college.” Baekhyun sits back and inspects the doorway. There’s no way anything is busting through that. He traces a hand over the jutting nails and destroyed door frame. Excellent work, considering the rush. He sighs and looks over at Chanyeol. “It’s not like you’re much older.”

“I’m twenty-four!”

“I know.”

Chanyeol points an accusatory finger at him, but he’s smiling. “See, you’re totally a fan. I knew it. How the fuck did you learn to fight like that? You’re — ” He cuts off but Baekhyun knows a hundred endings to that statement:  _ you’re small, you’re young, you don’t have the shoulders for it _ . Nothing he hasn’t heard before.

But then Chanyeol finishes with, “You’re talented.”

“Kendo. It’s not that hard.”

“Is that the Japanese sword thing?” Chanyeol turns and looks at the katana with new interest. He runs a hand over the smooth hilt and Baekhyun stifles the urge to smack his hand away. The katana awakens some primal possessiveness in him, a feeling he’s not unwelcome to, but definitely surprised by. 

Baekhyun reaches for the displaced chips. He tosses a bag to Chanyeol and then opens one himself. The idea of eating  _ more  _ potato chips is vaguely disgusting, but. Such is life now.

He shoves a handful into his mouth. “Yeah, that’s the Japanese sword thing.”

“So you’re a weeb?”

Baekhyun stops chewing. “No, I’m a  _ jock _ .”

“How long have you been doing it?”

“Practically my whole life.” Baekhyun shrugs. “I’m ranked third nationally.”

Chanyeol’s eyes bulge. “No way. That makes… a lot of sense.”

His smile drops away and Baekhyun knows he’s thinking of the carnage from this morning. Well, it’s a damn good thing he can fight, right? Or else they’d both be dead. He feels his ears heat up under Chanyeol’s stare and anxiously chews louder. He won’t apologize for doing what needs to be done.

“How are you able to do it?” Chanyeol asks.

Baekhyun plays dumb. “Do what?”

He gestures to the room at large. “You know. Kill people.”

“They’re not people anymore, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol nods. He bites his thick lower lip, dragging it with his teeth, and Baekhyun coughs on a chip lodged in his throat. 

“I know, but that was my first time seeing one up close. They still look like people. It scares me.”

His free admittance of fear makes Baekhyun pause. If Chanyeol’s too scared to fight, he won’t last a millisecond without Baekhyun in front of him. It’s an annoying thought, that he’s the sole defender of their meager abode, but that’s not something he can change. He can control his own emotions. Chanyeol’s don’t matter.

_ They’re not people _ , he thinks to himself, but there’s a lingering, queasy doubt. They’re not people, but are they human? What defines a human? A week of observation isn’t enough to definitively conclude that zombies are irredeemable, that their souls are peeled away like skin after the first sign of infection, and Baekhyun really  _ doesn’t know _ . They can still feel pain. He remembers the redheaded girl, the first one, screaming when he cleaved her body clear in half. Are they alive? How much of the person is left underneath the decay? 

Does any of that matter when it comes down to life versus death?

Baekhyun doesn’t even know how long the turning process takes. Uncertainty is a well he could spiral into for hours, days, weeks, so he boxes those semi-philosophical thoughts for a rainy day. Once upon a time, he’d love to discuss the moral implications of humanity, but now that death is his day-to-day reality, it’s less interesting.

“There’s no room for fear here,” he finally says, picking crumbs out of the bag.

“There’s already fear here.” Chanyeol wipes both hands on his ripped jeans. “But it’s okay. We can still live if we’re afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

Chanyeol gives him a  _ look _ . His brows scrunch together. “I don’t believe that.”

“Well, it’s true.” Baekhyun stands and abandons the empty bag. He stretches both arms above his head, relishing the weight in his stomach even if it’s from potato chips. The floor is a mess. He continues, “I don’t feel anything. That’s how I do it.”

He has no interest in elaborating, so he goes upstairs and collapses into his cardboard-and-sheets bed. It’s probably early afternoon, but his hands are sore from the hammer and his body is wrung out post-adrenaline, so he’s asleep within minutes.

He misses the way Chanyeol’s face falls when he leaves the room. Baekhyun dreams about sitting in the grassy field near his apartment, blinking sun out of his eyes and repeating, “They’re not people. I don’t feel anything.  _ I don’t feel anything _ .”

The next several days pass uneventfully. Baekhyun sleeps a lot, wanders the tiny property, and tries not to bite Chanyeol’s head off for every little annoyance. The problem is Chanyeol wants to  _ talk _ . Not even about anything in particular, he just likes talking. About astronomy. About the half-completed albums he’ll never hear from favorite artists. About food — a lot about food, actually, because Chanyeol’s mom owns a restaurant. 

“Were you always this hungry, or is it the high fructose corn syrup?” Baekhyun interrupts a steak monologue to sit straighter on the counter and shake a half-empty bag of cookies at Chanyeol, who lounges across the room with a notebook propped in his lap.

“Lack of exercise,” Chanyeol sighs, pausing with one dexterous hand poised above the paper like an executioner looking to strike. He’s more when he’s writing: colorful, reactive, crass. When Baekhyun feels particularly dull inside, he perches here and watches the creative mitosis happen.

Baekhyun waves a lazy hand at the floor. “Just work out here. There’s plenty of room. No old men to judge your form and reminisce about the glory days of college football.”

Not that anyone would judge Chanyeol and his biceps, Chanyeol and his broad, neverending shoulders. Mottled, splitting sunlight traces patterns over his ripped jeans, jerking to the time of a breeze neither of them can feel. The shadows of the tree carcasses outside have become so familiar that Baekhyun sees them imprinted on Chanyeol’s legs when he closes his eyes.

There’s a quiet sigh, and Baekhyun raises his eyes to see Chanyeol, blank-faced and blurry. Like he’s fading out of focus and merging with the shelving unit. Baekhyun blinks. It’s just the light playing tricks.

“Maybe,” Chanyeol says. “I have to finish this first.”

Baekhyun rips the empty bag along its edge and spreads the plastic flat against the counter, shaking off clinging chocolate crumbs. He’s been doing this in an effort to collect plastic for some undecided future project. “What’s the point of writing music no one else will hear?”

“I’m not writing music,” Chanyeol says, and it sounds like a question. “I’m writing a letter.”

“To  _ who _ ?”

“My — ” He stops. A full stop, mouth closed, eyebrows furrowed at the notebook while he considers the apparent complexity of a simple question. Baekhyun can’t, for the life of him, remember if Park Chanyeol had any dating scandals. Kyungsoo would know in a heartbeat, could probably list their names and a compliment for each in the same breath.

Chanyeol sighs. “My best friend.”

There is a morbid satisfaction in watching an optimist suffer. Those who are quick to laugh are sometimes very slow to cry, and Chanyeol has felt like an immovable force of positive energy, of faith, since they met.

With the obvious exception of the post-zombie breakdown. Extenuating circumstances.

Baekhyun leans forward, drawn in by that ugly and recently exposed pain. Here is proof that Chanyeol aches, too. “What was their name?”

“Jongin.” 

“Jongin.” Baekhyun tests out the intonation. The careless way he repeats the syllables, so precious off of Chanyeol’s tongue, fills him with an odd idea of power. Chanyeol is gifting him this knowledge. He doesn’t have to share. Baekhyun feels humbled — deep down, anyway, in the folds of himself which are still soft and untainted. Mostly he feels vindicated. He’s not alone in this pain the way Chanyeol made it seem.

“Why do you write him letters?”

“It’s part of the healing process. I left a lot of things unsaid, and putting them to paper is cathartic.” Chanyeol rips out a blank piece of paper, oblivious to Baekhyun’s inward sins, and passes it over. “You could try it if you want.”

Baekhyun holds the paper between thumb and forefinger, memorizing its soft texture. The blank page is a formidable creature. He’s always been intimidated by options, after years of floating unambitious and wayward through exams, and the opportunities presented by an unpenned letter are excruciating. Who would he write to? 

Kyungsoo. Obviously. God, what would he say? Imagining his name across the first line,  _ Dear Kyungja, you’ll never guess who I’m with _ … it’s too much for Baekhyun’s heart.

His fist closes and he crumples the paper. “No thanks.”

“You didn’t have to ruin it,” Chanyeol sighs deeply. If the situation were reversed, Baekhyun would be angry, but he sounds closer to disappointment than anger. He returns to his own letter with focus and soft eyes. “We have limited resources.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe next time, though?”

“Sure.”

Chanyeol shrugs, and Baekhyun knows that means he has an open invitation to borrow paper from the pile of notebooks Chanyeol keeps stacked under the salsa display. 

The relative peace is disturbed when Baekhyun gets bored several minutes later and starts “decorating” the ground floor with silver plastic “snowflakes” tossed crassly atop the highest displays. Finally, he’s found a worthy endeavor for all this waste they’re creating — if only he could brainstorm a sustainable project. He’s driving himself insane thinking about survival, and when the energy burst sputters out, he collapses ass-first on the dusty tiles and releases a long, “Fuuuuuuuck.”

Chanyeol, unbothered across the floor, doesn’t recoil from Baekhyun’s foul mouth. He laughs with him. He’s got a habit of smacking whatever’s next to him when he laughs too hard, and Baekhyun shifts preemptively before realizing that isn’t the case now, but he doesn’t mind much. It can be annoying. But Chanyeol’s hands sharp on his shoulder, his thigh — that’s the only human touch he’ll feel for the rest of his life. Things could be worse.

When they head upstairs to sleep, Baekhyun catches a glimpse of familiar letters before Chanyeol can close the notebook. He doesn’t mean to — or maybe he does, so what — but he reads it. Then he regrets reading it.

_ song reminds me of you now don’t laugh I know it’s pathetic I’m just lonely  _

  
  
  


They discover an old battery-powered radio three days after the break-in. Baekhyun excitedly sets it up the counter and Chanyeol manages to fiddle with the controls until it sputters to life. He tries every single channel and they’re all the same: white noise. 

Baekhyun gets mad and throws the radio back in the closet. It smashes into several pieces and he almost —  _ almost  _ — bursts into tears right then and there. Chanyeol even wraps an arm around his shoulders. But Baekhyun takes a deep breath, slips away from Chanyeol, and goes to bed. He’ll sleep it off.

When he wakes the next morning, it’s frigid. Frost skates in beautiful spirals across the window. Chanyeol has pulled his bed right next to Baekhyun’s. The meter between their bodies is the warmest spot in the store. 

Every night he’s fallen asleep to Chanyeol being gentle on the guitar, but this is a new intimacy, and Baekhyun tries not to think about it too hard. Warmth is worth the sacrifice.

It’s a rare morning that he’s the first one awake, so Baekhyun sits at the tiny desk and spreads out his paperwork. He’s been writing lately — first, doodles of mushroom clouds and skulls, because he’s dramatic, depressed, and deprived of his meds — and now he has the bare bones of a  _ plan _ . A skeletal system that might work to sustain this claustrophobic, anxious life.

He hasn’t told Chanyeol yet. When he hears the guy roll over and yawn, Baekhyun shuffles his papers together and takes them to the roof.

_ This _ is his new favorite spot. When it’s not too cold outside, he can dangle his feet off the edge and scan the low-rises for any movement, like a king among clouds and shadows. He emerges now and the jagged downtown skyline throws morning sunshine into his eyes. The frost is already melting. Baekhyun twists both legs under the railing and gets back to work.

Three pigeons fall gracefully from the pink overhang above a boutique. The movement catches Baekhyun’s eye and he looks up, only to see a light in the opposite window of a second-storey apartment. It flickers — like fire, not artificial light. He watches warily for a sign of smoke, but the sky is clear and fresh. It must be a controlled fire. Someone else is alive and trying to keep warm.

Baekhyun ducks his head and continues sketching. It’s none of his business who else decides to camp out on this street.

He doesn’t know how much time passes before a voice says, “There you are. Do you want breakfast?”

Baekhyun almost drops his papers in surprise. One tugs free and the breeze carries it back towards Chanyeol standing in the doorway, blinking sun from his eyes and crunching a granola bar. He tosses a bar to Baekhyun and stoops to retrieve the paper. 

“What’s this?”

Baekhyun pushes the granola bar into his mouth. “Nothing yet. Maybe something later.”

“Cryptic.” Chanyeol skims the cramped writing. “Are these… plans for a garden?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re trying to grow food,” Chanyeol realizes. His face smooths into surprise, and he smiles when he looks up. Something in Baekhyun’s chest catches. That particular warmth hasn’t been directed at him before, reserved for tricky chords or a particularly satisfying bag of chips, and he can’t look away from Chanyeol. Who looks fucking amazing in natural lighting. What a stupid thought. They haven’t spent enough time outside for Baekhyun to notice before.

He deliberately looks away. “Eventually, yeah. We need an irrigation system and six inches of dirt first.”

“How do you know all of this?”

Baekhyun gives a sarcastic little bow. “ _ Floral Management _ .”

Chanyeol whistles under his breath. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Unless you see any other strong, handsome qualified workmen standing around?” Chanyeol shades his eyes and pretends to scan the cityscape, eyes skimming over adjacent buildings and the hollow, empty planes of the rooftops. “Nope, just me.”

Baekhyun actually smiles. It catches them both by surprise. Before it can get awkward, he snatches his paper back and bypasses Chanyeol to retreat downstairs. Something on his face feels stretched after the first genuine smile in weeks. He rubs his cheek, a little concerned, but it must be psychosomatic.

Now that his stirring ideas have taken a more solid shape in his mouth, Baekhyun is itching to get started. He has literally nothing better to do except starve. He spends the afternoon ransacking the closet. Stepping carefully over the bones of the radio, he gathers together a meager pile of potential supplies. 

While he works, Chanyeol plays guitar. The first dozen songs, Baekhyun doesn’t know, but his heart almost stops when Chanyeol launches into another and he recognizes the chords. He would know those chords  _ anywhere _ . This song was blasted in his dorm so many times that he effortlessly knows every word. It’s Chanyeol’s debut track — Heaven. 

Baekhyun is facing the inside of the closet, away from Chanyeol. He takes a deep breath. When the vocals hit, he sings along, quiet at first and then growing. It hurts to push his voice like this after weeks of disuse, but he catapults into the high notes and feels the song tingle through his whole body. He sashays. He taps his feet. He opens his heart and  _ sings _ , only vaguely aware of the guitar keeping pace behind him.

Baekhyun’s voice cracks on the last verse. Unapologetic, he fades to a hum. Then silence. He resumes pulling apart PVC pipes. 

Chanyeol’s guitar rolls off his legs and crashes onto the floor. Baekhyun nearly jumps out of his skin. He whips around to see Chanyeol wide-eyed with lips parted, looking at Baekhyun like he’s just kissed a zombie. 

“You can  _ sing _ ?” 

“Um, a little.”

“No, no, no.” Chanyeol strides forward until they’re both standing in the closet and Baekhyun is uncomfortably cornered. “That was a lot of singing. Like, full tenor, belting, I’m-a-professional singing.”

“I’m not a professional.”

“Yeah, but you  _ could  _ be. With a voice like that.”

Baekhyun jabs him in the stomach with a PVC pipe. “I don’t like it that much.”

“That’s not what I just saw.” Chanyeol beams and throws out his arms in exaltation. He almost smacks the inner wall of the closet. “We can make music together, Baekhyun! I can’t believe it took you a week to break down, I just — what do you listen to? Who’s your favorite artist? Give me anything and I’ll figure out how to play it.”

This is something Baekhyun recognizes. He’s seen interviews, albeit peripherally, and he knows exactly how passionate Chanyeol gets about music, but the truth is he doesn’t care enough to get sucked in. 

He shrugs and looks down at the plastic in his hands. “It’s really not that serious. I didn’t listen to a lot of music.”

_ Kyungsoo did _ , he wants to say. But he can’t speak that name aloud without crying or screaming or having a total meltdown, so he swallows the lump in his throat and rips apart another series of connected pipes. 

He clears his throat and changes the subject. “These are perfect for irrigation, by the way. Help me poke watering holes in the bottom.”

Chanyeol deflates. They’re standing close enough for Baekhyun to feel when he leans a little closer, as if hesitating before an embrace, before backing off.

“Sure,” he says, “but, just so you know, you’re more than welcome to sing whenever I play. Any time. All the time.”

“Thanks.”

“No pressure, of course, just, whenever you want to chime in or harmonize or — ”

“Thanks, Chanyeol.”

He does feel a little better after that musical outburst. Baekhyun doesn’t dwell on it. There’s no time for anything but survival right now.

By sunset, they have a handful of workable pieces. Chanyeol cuts the bottom out of a plastic bowl and uses the circular chunk as a frisbee. His aim is terrible and he actually dents the mini fridge, but he laughs so hard he has to take off his jacket and fan his face. Baekhyun cracks another smile and looks deliberately away from Chanyeol’s thick biceps. They munch and lounge until it’s time to sleep, then repeat the same work tomorrow.

Baekhyun can feel his energy levels plummeting with each day of tiny, sugary rations. It takes almost a week to assemble a rudimentary watering system, and in that time, he develops a genuine loathing for granola bars and potato chips.

Then, while Baekhyun is shaking the dust from his sheets one morning, there’s a crash from downstairs.

“Baekhyun! I found something!”

He wanders down to see Chanyeol, beaming and swathed in cobwebs. He’s holding something behind his back.

“So I poked around in the breaker again,” he confesses.

“I thought we agreed no accidental electrocution.” Baekhyun crosses his arms. He’s not actually annoyed. The threat of a rugged electrical grid feels small in comparison to hunger — he just doesn’t trust Chanyeol not to accidentally die while sitting still and doing absolutely nothing. He’s realized this particular popstar is a magnet for disaster.

Not that Baekhyun is much better.

Chanyeol nods. “We did,” he says, stepping closer, “ _ but  _ you’ll be happy anyways. Look what I found stashed in the back.”

He whips out a 3-pound bag of soil. All of Baekhyun’s concerns fly out the window. “Holy shit.”

“We’re in business, man. Commence Operation Martian!”

Baekhyun’s too stunned to react. He reaches gently for the bag and pokes at the soil. Through the clear plastic, he can tell it’s ancient and dry, but it’s  _ dirt _ . He’s never been so happy to see a goddamn bag of dirt.

“What?” He looks up. “Operation Martian?”

Chanyeol raises his eyebrows. “You don’t like sci fi movies?”

“Uh. I like animation and magical realism.”

“Is that just an academic way of saying you only watch Studio Ghibli movies?”

Baekhyun’s mouth falls open. “What — fuck you, I’m  _ not a weeb _ .”

Then he’s laughing, and it’s breaking all over his face like a beam of light, he can feel it, and Chanyeol’s laughing, too. Baekhyun is alive. It strikes him then like inertia after a fall, that  _ he’s alive  _ and laughing in the center of the universe. He tries to breathe around the giggles and the cramping in his stomach, but he can’t. 

The bag of dirt slips through Chanyeol’s fingers and explodes on the floor.

That sets them off again. This time Chanyeol falls to his knees and smacks the tiles, disrupting the dirt and sending flecks flying into Baekhyun’s hair. So Baekhyun retaliates with a barrage of granola bars aimed at Chanyeol’s head — and his aim is perfect.

They collect themselves, dizzy from laughter, and sit at the foot of the stairs. Baekhyun can’t stop looking at the dirt. The cleanup process will suck, obviously, but this is a huge step forward. That dirt symbolizes life. 

Baekhyun looks up to see Chanyeol looking at him. There’s a faraway thought in the back of his head that Chanyeol’s observation from days earlier isn’t true — that Baekhyun already kinda knows him. He  _ doesn’t  _ know Chanyeol.

But he’s not ready to. Not yet.

He looks down at the dirt. “So I’m guessing you’ve never been  _ this _ excited for manure.”

“Who said anything about manure?” Chanyeol’s eyes stretch comically wide.

“That’s the next logical step. A natural fertilizer.” Baekhyun stands, ignoring the gentle dizziness accompanying his movements, and starts scooping the dirt back into the bag by hand. “We can shit freely on the roof, like men.”

“Will that be enough to grow what we need?”

“No, but it’s a start. We’ll have to forage sand or something.”

Chanyeol hunkers next to him and helps. He’s not smiling. Gone is the relaxed atmosphere from their earlier outburst of laughter. Gentle sunlight strikes him in the face and he narrows his eyes in an unfamiliar, somber way before touching Baekhyun’s wrists. Baekhyun shrugs him off and they both stop.

“Hey,” Chanyeol says, “Promise me something.”

“What?”

“Neither of us should go out there alone. Not even for scoping out the park down the block. We have to stick together.”

That’s a surprising request. Baekhyun studies the grime under his nails and tries to word his thoughts carefully. He bites his lip. “No offense, Chanyeol, but you’re gonna slow me down.”

“I know. But I’ll feel better if I’m with you.”

Baekhyun shakes his head. “I’m not dying because you can’t keep up.”

He’s being harsh and he knows it, but Baekhyun remembers the break-in. He killed all three zombies while Chanyeol cried for hours. Some people don’t have the disposition for this existence — Baekhyun’s scraping by the skin of his teeth and he knows, now, that he’s compartmentalizing and stifling all of his emotions in a really unhealthy way, but that’s  _ exactly  _ what keeps him alive. Chanyeol runs on dumb luck and yoga. He’s not fit for fighting or running. 

Chanyeol looks torn, but he reaches for Baekhyun’s hand again and this time Baekhyun tries really hard not to pull away.

“I’m not an idiot. I won’t get us caught. Just — I don’t want to be alone. I can’t sit here and wait for you to come back like some house husband, okay?”

“You’re not pretty enough to be a house husband.”

“Hey, I’m serious.” Chanyeol sighs and drops his hand. It’s suddenly colder in the room. “We’re in this together now and if you leave me, I will be upset.”

It’s the perfect opportunity to make a joke of his request and diffuse the argument, but Baekhyun can’t bring himself to disagree.  _ We’re in this together.  _ For better or for worse, that’s true. If he were going to kill Chanyeol, he would’ve done it already, and he can at least admit now that he doesn’t  _ actually _ want Chanyeol gone. 

So it’s not crazy to think Chanyeol might feel the same way. About not wanting him gone. That’s a moment of empathy Baekhyun has to swallow around. 

He starts scooping the dirt again. “Fine. We go together. But not until you have a real fucking weapon.”

Even though he isn’t looking, he can hear Chanyeol’s smile in his voice. “Deal.”

The best part about the apocalypse is Baekhyun has all the time in the world. After cleaning up the dirt and chowing on several granola bars, they begin rudimentary training. A space is cleared for sparring. Baekhyun selects a variety of items that could qualify as a weapon and allows Chanyeol to choose. Naturally he chooses the pocket knife and mosquito racket.

“This is the most dangerous item I’ve ever held.” Chanyeol brandishes the knife. “How  _ exciting _ .”

“You’re not exactly filling me with confidence.”

Chanyeol shrugs. “I led a sheltered life.”

“Why is that? Were your parents very strict?”

“No. But I debuted when I was fifteen, so.” He shrugs again and inspects the pocket knife. He tests the pad of his thumb against the blade and Baekhyun doesn’t warn him. “The company made decisions for me. Including what I was allowed to touch —  _ ow, fuck, _ that’s sharp.”

“Including  _ who  _ you were allowed to touch,” Baekhyun adds. He knows a little about entertainment companies and their restrictive dating rules. Everybody does. It’s not hard to imagine Chanyeol fending off admirers. He’s gorgeous, rich, talented,  _ famous  _ — and now Baekhyun is annoyed with himself for feeding Chanyeol’s ego, even if it’s only in his head.

_ He’s still an idiot _ , he thinks to himself.  _ And he’s probably going to die. _

He remembers that an utterly pathetic death is charging towards them at apocalyptic speeds, and that’s enough to focus Baekhyun on the task at hand. He stands and steadies the katana.

“I didn’t touch many people,” Chanyeol says, after the silence has gone a little too long. “Well — that’s not what I meant. I touched plenty of people. Not too many, I just — ”

“Chanyeol. Shut up and stab me.”

“As you wish, senpai.”

For that Baekhyun clubs him in the back of the knee.

Fighting is an exciting uphill climb. Baekhyun’s been out of the game for several weeks, and Chanyeol knows none of the rules and strategies associated with kendo, so he ends up explaining basic balance techniques while Chanyeol flaunts his flexibility and semi-listens.

Then a strange thing happens — it turns out they communicate best during a spar. Baekhyun feels it, like two wavelengths syncing up, finally in tune. They mirror each other’s quick steps across the dusty floor. Instinctively he understands Chanyeol’s breathing, deep during drills and rapid during spars. Words aren’t needed. Sweat and stinging skin become their new language, and Baekhyun feels the sparking embers of something new in his chest. Is he having fun?

He thinks deliberately of strategy. This is a chore. Not a vacation.

Overall, Chanyeol is decent at hand-to-hand combat. If he can knock Baekhyun down — difficult due to his low sense of gravity and experience dodging — then, most of the time, he can keep him down.

The only problem is that Chanyeol can’t  _ be aggressive _ .

Baekhyun sits up from where Chanyeol pushed him to the floor. His knees are smarting. “What are you doing? I’m down, come and get me, don’t lose your advantage hesitating!”

“I don’t know what to do once you’re on the ground. Sit on you? Go for the neck? Kick you in the balls?”

“Pretend I’m a zombie.”

Chanyeol blinks rapidly. His face is scrunched up and his shoulders are tense and defensive. They’ve been at it for a while and he’s growing distracted and impatient. “A stab in the heart?”

“Well, probably.” Baekhyun lies back down in a mock defeated pose. He gestures to his pliant body. “But what’s easier than that? Find the most vulnerable parts of the body.”

Frustrated, Chanyeol kneels beside Baekhyun and looks over his limbs like they belong to an unfamiliar alien. Something about the annoyed detachment in his face makes Baekhyun feel uncomfortable and exposed. Chanyeol’s never looked at him like that. He wiggles his legs.

Carefully, without making eye contact, Chanyeol moves the sheathed pocket knife to the jumping artery in Baekhyun’s neck. He presses feather-light on the skin.

Suddenly Baekhyun’s breathless. “There,” he says, lying very still. “Right there.”

His heart rate skyrockets. The thundering in his chest must be obvious to Chanyeol — he’s practically staring at his neck — but Baekhyun can’t explain where this adrenaline is pouring in from. He doesn’t feel like running away, even though there’s a knife at his throat. He feels like leaning into this, whatever this moment is turning into, whatever odd position they have with Chanyeol kneeling above him and holding a strange remoteness in his eyes.

Baekhyun feels like a vulnerable part of the body. 

The moment passes when Chanyeol’s face smooths out and he deliberately tickles Baekhyun in the junction between his neck and shoulder. Baekhyun smacks him in the chest so hard they both tilt over, roles reversed, and he takes the opportunity to steal the pocketknife and pin it against Chanyeol’s neck.

They’re both breathing heavily. 

“That was better.” Baekhyun stands up and paces to the other end of the room. It’s not far enough to calm his heart. “Let’s go again. Grab the mosquito racket.”

“For the record, I still don’t like fighting,” Chanyeol warns, but he sits up and reaches for the racket. “Violence doesn’t suit this pretty face.”

Baekhyun responds to that with a chokehold.

  
  


This is the first time it happens —

Baekhyun is watering the ferns on the windowsill in the living room when Kyungsoo gets home from work. His bow tie is still on. Baekhyun turns and is delighted by the contrastive sight of it, so cute and diminutive on someone so otherwise domineering, like Kyungsoo.

“Hey, how was your day?” Baekhyun sits cross-legged on the carpet and strokes the ferns with one hand. He likes to make them happy.

Kyungsoo is out of breath, like he just ran up three flights of stairs from the lobby. “Good. Did you punch the guy in your Bio class?”

“Not yet. I decided I’m going to fake a train accident and leave him in a cave, a la Angel Beats.”

Kyungsoo blinks. “Is that an anime reference I don’t understand?”

“You don’t understand  _ any  _ anime references. Unless it’s Prince of — ”

“Anyway.” Kyungsoo sets his bag on the table and unties the bow around his neck. There’s a tiny green stain on the sleeve of his button-up. That’s how Baekhyun knows it was a bad day at the restaurant. “I have something to ask you.”

Intrigued, Baekhyun abandons the plants to sit at the table. He draws both knees up to his chest. “What?”

“Do you want to go see a movie with me?”

“Which?” Baekhyun splays his hands out like he’s reaching for an octave across the table. He’s not about to agree to a grade-A horror on the big screen. He knows better.

Kyungsoo blinks. “Any. I don’t know. Whichever one you want.”

_ That’s  _ new. Baekhyun isn’t the movie buff here, and Kyungsoo is usually the one dragging him to select viewings or special premieres. Never has he asked for Baekhyun’s choice. It throws him off.

“I don’t know what’s playing. Uh — what do you want to see?”

Kyungsoo sits carefully across the table. His eyes fixate on Baekhyun’s spread hands, and the atmosphere in the room slips into something serious faster than Baekhyun can control. He feels unmoored. Like he’s missing something.

“I want to take you out to a movie,” Kyungsoo says quietly. “Or just out. Your choice.”

It doesn’t make sense. Unless — Baekhyun’s whole body flashes hot. Tingles erupt in his stomach. Is Kyungsoo asking him out? There’s no fucking way. He must be reading too much into this.

He swallows hard and tries not to let his hope inflate. “We go to the movies all the time.”

“Then let’s go somewhere else. Wherever. I want to take you  _ out _ .”

“Out? Like on a date?” Baekhyun wiggles his eyebrows and laughs. His heart is thundering and he has to hide both hands under the table, fisted in his sweater, to keep them from shaking. “Finally, you’re wooing me.”

But Kyungsoo has this  _ look _ in his eye. It’s like he’s about to win Smash, like he snuck a cucumber into the recipe, like he has the draw 4 UNO card in his deck.

He’s about to call Baekhyun’s bluff.

“Yeah, a date,” he says, not smiling. “Let’s try it.”

Baekhyun stops breathing. A cloud crosses the sun and plunges the room into half-hearted gray light. “Like, an actual date?” 

“Why not?”

“Do you…” Baekhyun looks at Kyungsoo — his steady hands, his solemn brows — and sees the same guy who pulls Baekhyun’s hair if he loses at Rage Cage. “Do you  _ want  _ to date me?”

“I’d like to  _ try. _ ” Kyungsoo reaches for the colorful mountain of post-it notes at the corner of the table and starts organizing to keep his hands busy. He’s losing his nerve. “There’s no pressure. You can say no if it’s weird.”

Baekhyun doesn’t want to say no. He also doesn’t want to commit to a date with his best friend/roommate without a little clarity. Kyungsoo is bi, but he’s never  _ ever  _ expressed interest in Baekhyun. He would’ve noticed.

“I want to,” Baekhyun says quickly, sitting straighter and arranging his face into something nonchalant. “Yeah, why the fuck not? Let’s try. I just — ” He swallows. “What brought this on?”

Kyungsoo tops off the stack of pink post-it notes and starts on the orange pieces. His voice is quiet and a little strained, like he’s holding back laughter or a whole lot of yelling. “Jongdae said something the other day that made me think.”

Baekhyun’s heart plummets. Did Jongdae rat him out?

But Kyungsoo continues, “He hotboxed in the bathroom for an hour before I came over, and you know how he gets. But. I don’t know. He kept talking about Jongdeok and how miserable he is because his — his secret crush on his best friend didn’t work out. Now she’s getting married and Jongdeok regrets never saying anything.”

Kyungsoo blushes and slides the post-it notes in a neat line at the edge of the table, where they belong. The implications of his statement hang sweet and heavy around them — Baekhyun’s hope inflates fully, bright and unyielding. 

“So you have a secret crush on me,” Baekhyun says, and he can’t keep the smile off his face. He untangles his fingers from his shirt and leans over the table until Kyungsoo looks up, cheeks visibly pink. “For real? I can’t believe you confessed first. I was going to, I really was, but with the whole roommate thing there wasn’t an opportune moment — ”

“What?”

Baekhyun jumps up and slides into the chair next to Kyungsoo, instead of across from him, and scoots until his knees press against Kyungsoo’s thighs. “We’ve kinda been on dates before. You bought my last movie ticket. I cooked you dinner yesterday.”

“I guess.” Kyungsoo uses one finger to push his glasses up his nose. He looks vaguely overwhelmed by Baekhyun’s sudden proximity and the excitement roiling off him like steam. The whole room heats up.

“So can we skip to the messy part?”

Kyungsoo’s eyes flick down to Baekhyun’s mouth. Then back up. “The messy part,” he repeats, lips tugging downward in a smile. “Seriously?”

“Smooth, right?” Baekhyun braces one hand on Kyungsoo’s thigh to lean forward until their noses almost touch. “I know.”

With light streaming aggressively over the ferns, bow tie crooked on the table, Baekhyun kisses Kyungsoo. Who kisses back. And back and back until it’s more like  _ Kyungsoo  _ is kissing  _ Baekhyun  _ and there’s a whole universe of intimacy between their fingers, meeting in the middle and lacing together. When Kyungsoo climbs into his lap and his head hits the chairback, Baekhyun is pretty sure the Big Bang repeats.

He laughs against Kyungsoo’s mouth and the world becomes stunning.

  
  


Their first “Operation Martian” venture begins at the crack of dawn several days later. It’s remarkable only because Baekhyun actually wakes up and joins Chanyeol at his stupid yoga session, as a way to limber up before exploring the godforsaken outside world. He’s never done yoga. He copies every move Chanyeol makes, every breath he takes, and the concentration it requires is surprisingly soothing.

Very studiously he ignores Chanyeol’s smug smirk at the end of the exercise. “Having fun?”

“That was boring as shit,” he lies, “I don’t know why you do it every morning.”

Chanyeol springs up and fake-punches the wall. His voice takes on a loud, announcer-like quality. “Because I’m an  _ athlete _ !” 

Against his better judgement, Baekhyun smiles. “And a pacifist. Too bad.”

He finishes lacing up his boots and crosses the room to check the katana. Their sheets are a rumpled mess and he’s careful to step over them. Baekhyun finds himself with the urge to ask questions about Chanyeol’s life — and he’s been giving into that impulse more and more often.

“If you weren’t a performer, what would you be doing?”

There’s a faint shine of post-yoga sweat on Chanyeol’s forehead that he wipes away with a sleeve. He pulls on his own shoes with a funny, constipated expression as he thinks. “Honestly, I don’t know. Studying music? Busking on the streets until I got famous again?”

“So, music was  _ it  _ for you.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Chanyeol shakes dust out of his shirt. “What about you? Did you always know what you wanted?”

Baekhyun wants to say,  _ no, I just picked whatever sounded fun and unlikely _ , but all he says is, “Nope.”

There are no useful tools in the closet, so Chanyeol whittles away a wooden board until it sharpens into a stake. Baekhyun is ready and antsy with anticipation — his hands are insatiable and nothing is safe from their fiddling, not silver jacket buttons nor shards of wood from the rafters, not his own voluminous hair. 

To busy himself before they leave, Baekhyun discreetly rips a page from the green notebook atop Chanyeol’s stack. He pulls purposefully from the back so he won’t see any writing. Then he sits on the pile of notebooks and reaches for the pen balancing atop a jar of salsa verde. 

He hesitates. The paper mocks him with an unlined brightness. Is this the best place for all his nervous energy? If he doesn’t write a letter now, he might never do it, and the thought has been bothering him since Chanyeol brought it up. He has to try just to prove he  _ can _ .

So Baekhyun takes pen to paper spitefully.  _ Dear Kyungsoo… _

Except the terrible, dark things living in Baekhyun’s heart start to stir. Everything he’s shoved into a bloody box at the back of his ribcage is shifting, moving, scuttling forth at the first crack of light. He pauses. The name stares back at him, begging to be spoken. Baekhyun can’t remember what he wanted to say. His fingertips go cold sitting still.

When Chanyeol stomps across the room, he interrupts nothing, because Baekhyun’s writing process started and ended with the address. 

Chanyeol raises his eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Baekhyun crumples the paper just like the first and stands up so quickly he blinks lights out of his eyes. The box is closed. Those shadows of feelings are pushed aside, where they belong, and he lets the pen clatter to the floor. “Are you ready?”

Chanyeol steps closer until the fresh, windblown smell of his coat envelops the space between them. Baekhyun’s fingertips warm. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Let’s just go.” Baekhyun shakes his head. He takes the stairs two at a time towards the roof, then slides down the ladder before Chanyeol’s head even pops over the side of the railing.

The outside world sleeps.

The sky is empty of birds and the windows are empty of lights. No curtains flutter, no rodents scurry, no taxi drivers honk at delayed traffic, and the only movement comes from overgrown weeds descending slowly over the dead grass in the park. Early morning fog sets the scene with untrustworthy gray light. It’s a wondrous and harrowing world. Baekhyun has to look away from the scattered patches of dried blood that once were his classmates.

Chanyeol descends into the landscape as a smear of color. He hangs the toes of his sneakers off the curb. The way he clutches his bag straps makes him look rouge and childish, like a schoolkid skipping homeroom. “Where do you want to start?”

“The park would be closest.” Baekhyun squints. “Let’s look for a patch of living grass. That soil will be healthy.”

They stick to the walls and move quietly. It’s obvious by the way Chanyeol breathes shallow and quick that he’s scared, but his jaw is set and he moves after Baekhyun with purpose. He’s so distracted checking on Chanyeol that he almost misses the sidewalk splitting into the depths of the park, away from the shelter of buildings. This is where they’ll be totally exposed.

Baekhyun tightens his grip on the katana. The stifling quiet sets his nerves alight. “Watch my back, Chanyeol.”

A warm hand skates across the small of his back. Baekhyun almost flinches, but Chanyeol’s quiet voice reaches his ear. “I’ve got you.”

Those steady words set him at ease more than they should. Baekhyun takes a deep breath and leads the way towards a darker patch of grass. The weeds crunching underfoot sound like gunshots, but their search reaps golden benefits — there, at the base of a scraggly spruce, is a fighting patch of life. 

Baekhyun crouches on a protruding root. “Here. Get the stake.”

Fumbling with the bag, Chanyeol almost slices Baekhyun open with the rogue pocket knife in his haste.  “Shit, sorry, let me — ”

Chanyeol drops the pocket knife and stabs the stake into the lush ground. His arms flex as he gouges wildly into a disrupted and chaotic sea of grass. Dirt goes flying, roots are torn, and Baekhyun dives in with both hands to scoop out whatever he can reach underneath. He tosses piles into the bag. It’s messy and destructive.

A shadow in the sky catches Baekhyun’s eye and he turns. He’s never seen a vulture before but recognizes it instantly, wheeling above them and disappearing low between buildings.

That feels like a bad omen. He moves faster and reaches for freshly dug dirt heedless of the flailing stake. 

Baekhyun doesn’t know how much time passes until Chanyeol pauses, hair falling into his eyes. “Bag’s almost full.”

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here.” Baekhyun zips up the bag and grabs the katana.

There’s no hesitation this time. They sprint across the park and over the street, feet pounding on the asphalt, all the way to the front of the convenience store. Baekhyun takes a final look at the street and empty cars —

He freezes. Chanyeol almost collides with his back.

“Do you see that?” Baekhyun points.

“What?”

“The windows.”

Every single car window is broken. Not just cracked but shattered all the way, as if someone swung a baseball bat right through the center.

“What happened?”

Baekhyun grits his teeth. “I knew there were other survivors. Someone’s looting.”

It says terrible things about his psyche that Baekhyun’s first thought is,  _ We have to defend the store against outsiders.  _ He’s not interested in working with anyone else. Desperate people are dangerous people.

Chanyeol jogs forward before Baekhyun can stop him. Pressing both hands against the passenger door of his tour van, he peers through the shattered window, biting his lip hard. He must not find what he’s looking for, because he leans into the space and drags one careful hand through the glove box.

“No way.” He emerges with a wrinkly, upset expression that de-ages him impressively. “They took my photo album. All my Polaroids. I don’t have Jongin’s pictures — ”

Baekhyun darts forward to tug Chanyeol backwards by the end of his shirt. “Okay, later, let’s  _ get inside _ .”

Standing out on the bare street feels more exposing than the entire park debacle. They’re so close to safety. Luckily Chanyeol is malleable under his hands. With a final lingering look, he backs away and follows Baekhyun into the alley, stepping carefully over the stale scrapes of blood.

Finally. Hooking the katana over one shoulder, Baekhyun starts scaling the ladder. A grunt below him suggests Chanyeol is doing the same.

Until there’s a pause. Baekhyun stops two rungs from the roof and looks down. Chanyeol is frozen near the bottom of the ladder, eyes locked on the end of the alley, where a small shape moves in the darkness. 

“Come on.” Baekhyun kicks the ladder so it rattles a little.

“There’s a dog.”

“And?”

“I don’t know, I just — ” Chanyeol looks up. His eyes are big and wet, stirring something deep inside Baekhyun’s chest, and a part of him wants to climb down and wipe the tears away. He can’t even tell if Chanyeol is upset because of his missing photos or the mistreated dog. He looks pointedly away before he rushes down there and overrides his own self-preservation instincts.

Oblivious, Chanyeol adds, “He’s probably hungry. Can we take him inside?”

“We’re not sharing our rations.” Baekhyun squints. There’s definitely a dog in the shadows, a tiny and brown breed, but he’s not swayed to sympathy by its faint cries. “Unless the dog  _ is  _ a ration.”

Chanyeol looks horrified. “No. No! Absolutely not!” He ducks his head and starts climbing again in earnest, as if afraid Baekhyun will ask him to descend and kill the dog with his bare hands. 

Snorting, Baekhyun pulls himself onto the roof and drops the katana. He was kidding. Mostly. He does feel better when they’re both standing on the roof, sucking deep lungfuls of safe foggy air, letting the adrenaline ebb quietly away.

Chanyeol peers over the railing again. “But having a dog around could be useful. Like a therapy animal — ”

“Waste of time, don’t even think about it.” Baekhyun kneels beside the garden box and pretends not to see Chanyeol roll his eyes. “Help me arrange this dirt.”

“It’s like living in a fascist state,” Chanyeol mutters, unzipping the bag and rifling through. Their running displaced enough soil to leave a mini air pocket. “You know I’m older than you.”

“So? Be grateful I’m here to take care of you.”

“You aren’t even taking care of  _ yourself _ .” Chanyeol upturns the bag with an unnecessary roughness and pours dirt into the box. It hits halfway to their 6 feet mark. 

Baekhyun’s a little take aback by that tone — he knows Chanyeol isn’t a fighter, by any definition, and it looks a lot like he’s angry. He shuffles the dirt with one hand and stares. There are stress lines around Chanyeol’s eyes and an unhappy pucker to his mouth that’s never been apparent before. His shoulders are slumped and unmoving.

“What’s your problem?”

“Sometimes you act like a condescending brat.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun seethes, sitting back on his ass. “This is about how emasculating it is you’re like six four and can’t throw a punch. That’s not  _ my  _ fault.”

“No, your problem is you have the vocabulary and temperment of a five-year-old. Because throwing tantrums all the time is your only solution. Newsflash, Baekhyun, the world ended and it  _ still _ doesn’t revolve around you.”

Baekhyun feels like he’s been slapped. There’s a static white noise erupting in his head. Every muscle in his body contracts once, violently, as he’s gripped by the bloodthirsty desire to throw Chanyeol off the roof. He wants to kill him. He would enjoy killing him.

Before he can even move, Chanyeol’s up and stalking away. His movements are stilted with emotion but decisive: he reaches the ladder and starts climbing down.

All of Baekhyun’s anger plummets into his stomach. His blood runs cold. “Chanyeol — wait.”

_ What the fuck is he thinking? _ Death awaits anyone alone on the ground. Baekhyun hangs half his body over the railing, heart pounding, as Chanyeol stalks off toward the end of the alley. He wants to sprint down there, katana flying, but he’s frozen with fear and disbelief. He’s about to witness a suicide. If a zombie happens to blast in and commit carnage, Chanyeol won’t survive, and they both know it.

Then he returns from the shadows clutching the little dog to his chest. He climbs back one-handed, looking immensely satisfied, like a storm has passed in his psyche.

Chanyeol stands impassively in front of Baekhyun and scratches the dog under the chin. A fluffy tail wags. “Her name is Linkin Bark.”

“Please,” Baekhyun says around the lump in his throat, removing his aching and bone-white fingers from the railing. “Never do that again.”

Chanyeol’s brief stint into rebellion changes things. For one, Baekhyun hates the dog. Linkin Bark is loud, infinitely hungry, and grimy even after three rubdowns with a spare rag. A patch of fur is missing from her back leg, the skin underneath scraped red, and part of him hopes for a sign of infection. He’ll throw the dog out with no qualms. He wants her and her stench gone.

Except Chanyeol  _ adores  _ her, and Baekhyun, for whatever reason, cares about Chanyeol. So the dog stays.

Balling together random pieces of plastic, Chanyeol lobs a makeshift toy around the first floor and the puppy happily gives chase. Her tail smacks Baekhyun’s calves as she passes. “Are you doing that on purpose?” he hisses at her, glaring.

Chanyeol turns. “What was that?” 

“Nothing.”

There’s residual tension between them. Baekhyun won’t apologize for what he said, and Chanyeol probably feels he has no reason to apologize, even though the soreness of Baekhyun’s fingers beg to differ — hours later, he’s still living in the shadow of that fear. Chanyeol broke his own promise not to go out alone. Part of him feels betrayed.

Unfortunately, they’re both too stubborn to thaw. Chanyeol reaches for another piece of scrap to add to his amalgamated toy, but when his fingers make contact with one paper in particular, Baekhyun trips over himself standing. 

“Wait, don’t!”

He’s too late. Chanyeol has smoothed the paper and read its address. There’s nothing scandalous about it — Baekhyun never got further than the name, for fuck’s sake, but he sucks in a sharp breath like he’s been pinched in the gut. 

Chanyeol shapes the name with his mouth.  _ Kyungsoo. _

“Don’t,” Baekhyun repeats. “I—”

But Chanyeol is very careful. He folds the paper, neat and considerate, and hands it to Baekhyun. His hands are warm and so is the paper. It takes everything in Baekhyun not to scrunch it up.

Chanyeol doesn’t speak. Instead he steps forward and envelops Baekhyun in a hug, both arms around his waist, naturally nestling him into his broad chest. He smells like wind, and under that, sweat, under that still, something sweet and musky.

Baekhyun doesn’t move his arms, but he does allow his head to tilt forward and rest against Chanyeol’s shoulder. He breathes deep. His body is suddenly and horribly aware of how long it’s been since he touched another human. Weeks. His muscles relax without permission. Even his heart rate slows.

When Chanyeol speaks, his chest emits a low and soothing hum. “Just so you know, you’re welcome to read my letters anytime. They’re personal, but —” He sighs and Baekhyun feels it. “You are the only one I can tell my stories to now. And I want to be known. Even for what I can’t say out loud.” A hesitant hand moves up to touch Baekhyun’s hair. “But I understand you’re not like that. You don’t have to tell me anything. Ever.”

_ That’s  _ when Baekhyun feels tears claw upwards from his throat. He takes a deeper, shuddering breath, as the box inside him rattles and shakes. He wants to blurt out the truth of himself. He wants to tell Chanyeol everything.

But that would make it real, wouldn’t it? If Baekhyun tells his stories of before, if he relinquishes that reality and its normality, he accepts this half-life as permanent. He’s not ready for past tense.

Gently he steps back, blinking residual wetness out of his eyes, and nods so that Chanyeol can see his acknowledgement. Baekhyun isn’t quite fit for words, so he runs away and hides under his sheet upstairs.

He listens. It stays quiet downstairs for a while, longer than he expected, but Chanyeol eventually returns to playing with the dog. Baekhyun lies awake until the light is completely sucked out of the room, staring at the ceiling, hitting rewind on the day and flexing his fingers.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Chanyeol comes upstairs. Baekhyun rolls over and pretends like he’s been asleep since the dawn of time. But when Chanyeol settles next to him and starts to breathe heavy and quiet, Baekhyun rolls over again until they touch, his knuckles against Chanyeol’s back, his knees touching silky thighs.

That night is the best sleep Baekhyun’s had since the end of the world. Even when Chanyeol wakes him up for yoga — which he joins, reluctant and silent — Baekhyun doesn’t regret taking advantage of their physical proximity. He ignores the multiplying worms of guilt in his stomach.

If only he could talk to Kyungsoo. That’s all he wants. Even on paper.

_ Dear Kyungja _ , he would write.  _ I miss you. And I need your advice. I have so many feelings I don’t understand, mostly for Chanyeol... _


	2. Chapter 2

“Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there’s no one left to tell those stories? To hear them? Who will ever know that I existed? What if we are the only ones left — who will know our stories then?”   
—Carrie Ryan, the Forest of Hands and Teeth

 

Baekhyun is dripping dew from a plastic cup into the irrigation pipes when he hears a faraway rumble. He sifts through the dirt, carefully breathing through his mouth, and abandons the cup to peer over the railing. The sound reminds him of an avalanche, but he can’t immediately see anything wrong with the landscape.

His eyes wander to the high rises downtown. There’s a blue glass building, shorter and closer than the rest, that catches his eye. His old apartment building. It’s a thirty-minute walk from campus, but from the roof it looks much closer.

Baekhyun’s attention is snapped away by the sound crescendoing. Through the trees in the park, he sees flashes of shadow. Are those people running through the trees?

He darts away from the edge and pulls open the door. “Chanyeol! Come look at this!”

By the time Chanyeol emerges onto the roof, Baekhyun’s returned to the edge with both hands over his mouth. 

The park has birthed a warzone.

Three people are blasting through the trees in torn clothing, bloody from the knees down, sticks hanging from each hand. They’re screaming. Probably crying. Baekhyun sees one trip and then understands, suddenly and viciously, what the shadows behind them are. The guy disappears under an impossible, squirming mountain of hungry mouths, and his screams echo over the barren cityscape.

“Oh, god,” Chanyeol says faintly. “It’s a horde.”

Horde is an understatement. It’s the entire population of the city, ripped into human-shaped monsters and moaning like a nightmare crawling into reality, and Baekhyun is entranced. The second guy deflates and is overwhelmed quietly, desperately.

Then he realizes Chanyeol is saying his name. “Don’t look,” he says. “ _ Baekhyun _ . There’s nothing we can do.”

But he can’t move. He watches the last runner come hurtling closer and Baekhyun can almost see his face, his dark hair, before — 

Then Chanyeol is leaning in front of him, obscuring the view of the park and the carnage. His large hands come down on Baekhyun’s shoulders, warm and tight, and he leads Baekhyun through the door and down the spiral staircase until the cacophony of moans is filtered out.

Their bedroom is well-lit and familiar. Baekhyun takes a deep breath. He feels limp in the arms and legs. He feels wrung out like an old towel, stiff, as if his lungs haven’t worked properly in days.

“Thanks,” he mutters, mostly because Chanyeol is looking at him and he doesn’t know what else to say. Pieces of the shattered radio litter the floor — he must’ve been in the middle of delicate repairs, but still came sprinting when Baekhyun called.

Chanyeol shrugs. His eyes are unusually reflective and unsmiling. “I need a beer. Do you want a beer?”

“I want five.”

“Great.” He uses one foot to push all the tiny electrical parts together in one cramped corner. “Afternoon plans cancelled. We’re getting drunk.”

It seems a fitting response to the monstrosity they just witnessed. Why the hell not? Baekhyun is too spooked to stay on the bottom floor, and Chanyeol wordlessly agrees, so they carry two sixpacks upstairs and drink in bed. Linkin Bark doesn’t even twitch from her spot snoozing in the sunshine.

“We’re not going outside for a while.” Chanyeol cracks open a bottle and chugs. “The dirt can wait.”

Baekhyun needs to be two bottles deep before he can breathe. He doesn’t know how much he weighs right now — probably much less than the last time he drank — but his head spins. 

“I thought,” he starts, then swallows and starts again. “I thought they were survivors. I wouldn’t have called you if I knew.”

It’s not an apology, but Chanyeol shakes his head. “We needed to know what’s out there.”

“How many of us are left, do you think?” Baekhyun leans against the wall and uses one hand to spin the bottle cap.

Chanyeol brushes his hair out of his eyes and watches the bottle cap dance. “I don’t know. Not enough, probably.”

“What if there’s a cure?”

“You saw them, Baekhyun,” he says, and the way he curves over Baekhyun’s name, gently, thoughtfully, warms the space between them. “It’s like you said. They aren’t alive anymore. There’s nothing left to cure.”

“I know that, theoretically.” Baekhyun slaps the bottle cap flat. The metal grooves make a satisfying indentation on his palm. “The way they kill is instinctual. Predators and prey.”

He just wanted, for a second, to hope.

Even as he says it, Baekhyun realizes  _ this _ is the answer to his question from days earlier. Zombies aren’t human. They’re on a whole different level of the food chain. Biologically speaking, their behavior transcends cannibalism, and the result is a dethroning of human beings from the top of the food chain.

And yet. Do they have souls? Animals without sentience still have souls, right? Baekhyun eyes Linkin Bark across the room. Her back leg twitches to an unseen dream. There’s nothing special about her, but she’s  _ alive _ , and not in the same way zombies are alive. She has instincts ranging beyond  _ eat eat eat _ .

And yet. Baekhyun feels no better than her. He feels like no less of a monster than the nightmares outside. 

He opens a third bottle. Chanyeol retrieves his guitar from downstairs and starts strumming, because he can’t be idle for longer than ten minutes, and the familiarity of his fingers on the strings is soothing. Baekhyun lolls his head against the wall and allows his mind to numb. Chanyeol hums. Then starts to sing.

The comfort of this moment — soft and enveloped by Chanyeol’s pleasant voice — is eclipsed by the novelty of feeling drunk. Baekhyun scoots closer to Chanyeol and lays horizontally across his legs, pillowing his head below the guitar. Chanyeol misses a chord, then continues. 

Baekhyun inhales against the rough denim. Somehow Chanyeol still smells like summer, like sweat and sunshine and lotioned skin. A breeze pleasantly rattles the windows. The intimacy of their positions should scare him, but he doesn’t care right now.

“You’re really good,” Baekhyun says, because he’s never said it before, and because it’s true. “At music. I listened to you, before.”

Chanyeol stops singing. His voice falls into a whisper. “Thanks.”

“Finding something to love makes you lucky.” Baekhyun traces one finger along the rip in Chanyeol’s jeans. Goosebumps erupt on the skin of his knees. “I never had that. I was never good at anything except kendo, and I didn’t love it.”

“But you had some _ one _ to love, didn’t you?”

The words pierce Baekhyun right in the chest. His throat closes and he thinks he might puke, right over Chanyeol’s legs, so he pulls himself upright. His hands shake. The feeling passes and he takes another sip of beer.

He forces himself to look at Chanyeol, at his big, endearing eyes and disheveled popstar hair. Baekhyun exhales a sigh. “Yeah, I did.”

“I still have music.” Chanyeol slowly slides the guitar off his lap. “And you don’t have him.”

These admissions feel like a betrayal. Baekhyun has learned to live with fear, but guilt he can’t handle. He shuts his eyes and focuses on the cool bottle between his thighs. If Kyungsoo were here — 

It’s not enough. In one fluid motion, Baekhyun moves the bottle and returns to his spot curled in Chanyeol’s lap, this time digging his hands into Chanyeol’s jacket and aligning cheek against heartbeat. He’s trembling at the waist. That might be from cold or alcohol.

He’s never felt this lost.

Chanyeol’s hands sink gently into his hair. “I thought about what you asked — why I do it.” He swallows. “It’s about the philosophy of music. I think.”

Baekhyun can’t help his snort. With his head against Chanyeol’s internal organs, there’s no hiding it, so Chanyeol tugs his hair a little in retaliation. “Don’t laugh. I make music in order to be heard, okay? Like I said, I want to be known and understood. Music is the easiest way to present myself. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, you’re an attention whore,” Baekhyun says, but the words wobble and give away his raging heart. 

Chanyeol laughs anyway, breathy and quiet. “Yeah. Probably.”

“You succeeded, though. People knew you.”

“Does it matter now? If we’re the only two left...”

Baekhyun tilts his head until he can look at Chanyeol’s neck. He pinches the tight skin along the ribcage under his fingers, jutting through the shirt and jacket. “We’re not the only ones.”

Chanyeol twitches. Like he’s  _ ticklish _ . The temptation to do something about this newfound knowledge almost pulls Baekhyun out of the conversation, but Chanyeol shifts enough to angle his own head downward. They lock eyes.

“Maybe we are, though. Totally alone out here. Maybe everyone else in the world is dead or zombified. What was the point, then? Why did we live if we were meant to die like this?”

Baekhyun sighs. He sits up, bracing his hands beside Chanyeol’s hip so they stay eye-to-eye, and asks, “Are you religious?”

“I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Then stop asking questions we’ll never have answers to.”

Chanyeol looks surprised by his own smile, but he shoves Baekhyun in the shoulder and adjusts his legs into a criss-cross sitting position. When his smile fades, he looks at Baekhyun like he’s on the edge of a question. He stares at Baekhyun’s face. 

“What?” Baekhyun feels his ears heat under the attention. He deliberately looks away and focuses on the shelving unit against the opposite wall.

“Will you tell me about him?”

Oh. Baekhyun takes a swig of beer. “No.”

“Okay,” Chanyeol sighs and finishes his own bottle. 

They wait a whole day before venturing out again. Baekhyun keeps watch the entire morning, to be safe, but sees no signs of the horde returning. They dispersed like moaning shadows into the crevices of the city.

Chanyeol has his eyes set on the opposite apartment building. “There must be supplies left somewhere.” He pulls on gloves found stashed in the closet. They’re way too small, but he remains optimistic. “Maybe we can find a generator.”

“And do what? Turn on the lights?”

“Turn on the  _ water heater _ .”

That convinces Baekhyun. They leave a chocolate-free granola bar for the dog and take the ladder down two rungs at a time. A crisp breeze rolls off the asphalt. Baekhyun watches his breath billow into clouds, then disappear. He feels vaguely hungover.

Chanyeol seems to have no reservations. He strolls confidently across the street, mosquito racket dangling from one hand, empty backpack hanging open at the zipper. He spares a long glance at his tour van. 

“Be quick.” Baekhyun jogs in front of him, sidestepping weeds, to jiggle the knob of the front door. He does so quietly. This isn’t the apartment complex where he saw the light, days ago, but there are still dead people around he doesn’t want to meet. 

The knob is already destroyed, so they creak open the door. Something colorful catches his eye. Baekhyun freezes with one arm outstretched on the knob. There’s a cluster of flourishing forget-me-nots under the porch stairs of the boutique next door.

Chanyeol slides a hand onto his shoulder. “What?”

“Nothing.” Baekhyun grips the knob tight to keep from reaching for the flowers. He can feel himself smiling. “I’m surprised the flowers are still alive.”

He’s not really surprised. Forget-me-nots are notoriously difficult to exterminate. Baekhyun slams into the tile foyer and violently refocuses on the mission ahead.

The first floor apartments look like a post-tornado excavation site. Upside down couches are strewn in corners. Fridge doors gape open with marinara sauce splattered over the shelves. The walls smell like mold and dust, a concoction Baekhyun is beginning to attribute to death, and he resists the urge to cover his mouth. 

He ventures into the bedroom. The door creaks when he pushes it open, and Baekhyun is caught, surprised, by mundane and intimate items. Rumpled sheets fall off the bed and collect over fluffy pink slippers. The wooden closet door hangs open on one side, revealing a bulging collection of sweatshirts. He steps backward. This feels like trespassing. Baekhyun does cover his mouth then — to muffle his unsteady sigh. 

He leaves the bedroom and the ghosts still living there.

Meanwhile, Chanyeol isn’t careful with his looting. He kicks chairs off-center, bangs open drawers, and fills his bag with any knick knack that looks vaguely useful, including an expensive calligraphy pen from a pockmarked wooden desk. 

“Shhh,” Baekhyun whispers when he slams another drawer. Chanyeol shrugs, sheepish, and crosses the room towards him.

“Have you found anything good?”

Baekhyun spent most of his time avoiding the apartment’s intimacies and watching Chanyeol. “Not really,” he admits, brandishing a pocket knife and a dented can of Coke for his efforts in the living room.

Chanyeol’s eyes skip towards the front door. “Let’s check the next one.”

So they go. It doesn’t get easier. After the fourth ransacked apartment, Baekhyun stops trying for the bedrooms and only goes for the kitchens. They strike gold with a half-consumed emergency box in the bottom drawer. Chanyeol fills his bag with thirteen cans of beans, six water bottles, two matchboxes, and a flashlight. Baekhyun’s mouth waters at the idea of  _ savory food _ .

“We don’t have room for dirt on top of this.” Chanyeol gestures to the cans. The zipper almost refuses to close around the tongs of a metal fork, and Chanyeol accidentally stabs his own thumb shoving everything inside.

“Should we bother checking the second floor?” Baekhyun fingers the pockets on his own backpack. He doesn’t have room for dirt, either, but maybe a second bar of soap would fit.

Chanyeol eyes the bedroom door and hesitates. “I don’t want to push our luck. If we’re carrying too much, we can’t fight. I’ll grab an extra blanket and we can go.”

“Okay. Hurry.” Baekhyun’s hand flexes around the katana forgotten at his side.

Together they pick through wreckage toward the foyer. Baekhyun makes note of all the abandoned wood and glass panes — he’ll need to return here. They need a roof over the garden. A greenhouse roof, preferably. He has no idea how to build that, but hopefully Chanyeol can help.

Baekhyun’s chest hits Chanyeol’s bag when the latter stops moving in the threshold of the front door. Chanyeol shifts the blanket and mosquito racket into one arm, then pulls the calligraphy pen from a back pocket and bites off the cap. On the wall adjacent to the door, over peeling beige wallpaper, he writes  _ PARK CHANYEOL  _ and _ BYUN BAEKHYUN  _ in beautiful swooping characters.

Their names look nice together.

Chanyeol cranes his neck back to look at Baekhyun. “Do you know what the date is?”

“No fucking clue.”

“Oh well.”

Chanyeol shrugs and puts away the pen. He chews on his lower lip, a nervous tic that’s becoming habitual. It makes him look young and teasing. Baekhyun looks quickly away and casts his eyes toward the door. Through the windows, the burst of color from the forget-me-nots catches his eye again, and behind that, movement —

Baekhyun grabs Chanyeol’s arm. “Holy shit. Look.”

There is a dark-haired woman prowling down the middle of the street with a gun. She’s definitely alive. She peers into the buildings’ shadows with the eyes of a huntress. Something about her even gait is off-putting. She looks too calm for a survivor — she looks fearless in a dangerous, reckless way.

Also, she’s alone. That, more than anything else, uneases Baekhyun.

Chanyeol’s eyes stretch wide. “Where is she going? Should we say hi?”

“She has a  _ gun _ . We don’t know if she’s friendly.”

“But…” Chanyeol trails off and Baekhyun hears the words he doesn’t say.  _ She’s alive. She’s like us. _

Except they don’t go stalking down the road with guns. Baekhyun can’t even imagine holding a gun. He wouldn’t know where to put his hands, where to hide his fear. The katana is an extension of himself used for defense — and sometimes it still feels alien in his hands, burdensome and heavy with the blood of those he’s killed.

Baekhyun adjusts his grip. His palms are sweating. “Wait until she passes.”

So they watch her go, keeping very still behind the windows of the foyer. Chanyeol blinks hard when the clouds move and a burst of sunlight scatters over his face. Baekhyun studies the forget-me-nots. They look soft. He wants to pick one, but he can’t bear destroying any part of a stalwort plant. It deserves to live.

Baekhyun leads the way across the street. He narrowly misses tripping over a trapezoidal chunk of plastic, somehow lodged into a crack in the road and half-eaten by weeds. The zone around their little sanctuary is becoming more dangerous as nature recuperates. He spares a backward glance at the forget-me-nots and is surprised to see Chanyeol bent over them, inhaling.

“Let’s go,” he hisses, glancing up the street where the gun lady disappeared.

“Yeah, I’m coming!” Chanyeol straightens up and jogs over with one hand behind his back. Suspicious, Baekhyun tries to look, but Chanyeol jerks his enormous shoulders sideways and blocks the view entirely. “Don’t look, it’s a surprise.”

“What?”

“A  _ surprise _ , Baekhyun.”

“Whatever.” Baekhyun huffs a frustrated sigh. They don’t have time to squabble like kids in the middle of the street. He pivots and returns silently to the ladder and the safety of their roof.  

At least Chanyeol follows this time. He bounds from the top rung and immediately grabs Baekhyun, one-handed, by the shoulders. Beaming, he says, “Okay, you can see it now. I got you something.”

“It better not be an anime DVD, I swear to God. We can’t even watch it — ”

“No, no, no, better.” Chanyeol shakes his head. He steps closer.

Baekhyun stiffens with his back against the railing. He feels dwarfed. They’re so close. He’s reminded of the first time he saw Chanyeol on this roof — barely awake, asking after Baekhyun’s health, and beautiful. He takes a shallow breath.

“ _ These _ .” Chanyeol whips out a fist of forget-me-nots. The stems are short enough that petals stroke against his knuckles. “You were staring, and… I thought… you like flowers, right? I mean, obviously, you studied them.”

“You got them for me?”

Chanyeol nods. Completely shameless. His head is ducked a little, an indication of his earnestness, and something in Baekhyun’s chest gives way. He takes the flowers and brings them to his nose. 

They smell sweet and warm and nostalgic. He closes his eyes. “Thank you. You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to.” Chanyeol shrugs. “Enjoy them.”

He does. Baekhyun actually becomes completely obsessed with the flowers. While Chanyeol bustles through the store unloading their treasures, draping the extra blanket over their bed, and cuddling with Linkin Bark, Baekhyun sits in the second story windowsill and props his feet on the spiral staircase so he can stare into a forget-me-not abyss. He’s hypnotized. These must be the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

In part, it’s because they remind him of home. Every Friday of freshman year, he came back to the dorm from an Intro to Botany class with a new bouquet of miscellaneous flora, and the tradition continued into the apartment that he and Kyungsoo shared this year. Flowers, plants, and herbs of any kind were welcome in their space. It’s a bittersweet familiarity. Holding these soft stalks, which flourished in a rough world, humbles him. He almost wishes they hadn’t died. Almost. He’s a little selfish.

Baekhyun traces a petal and smiles. The irony of forget-me-nots specifically isn’t lost on him — Kyungsoo would be laughing, if he were here. 

That’s how Chanyeol finds him: kicked back, eyes glassy, smiling dopily into the flowers with the sunset commandeering the window. Chanyeol’s eyebrows do a complicated wiggle. “Are you good?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Do you want food?”

Baekhyun sits up. “ _ Yeah _ . Fuck. We should cook the beans. I’ll help.”

Chanyeol gets so excited he punches the air and almost falls down the stairs. He catches himself on the shelving unit, mouth wide with laughter, and extends his hand. His feet move with impatient excitement over the wood flooring.

“ _ Now _ , please,” he whines. “I’m starving.”

“You’re such a baby, baby.” Baekhyun takes his hand. His own voice sounds a little unfamiliar — rough.

Chanyeol’s smile changes at  _ baby _ , becomes softer and more difficult to read. It’s not his usual teethy joy. He tugs Baekhyun into a standing position but doesn’t meet his eyes. “Shut up, I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

Did Baekhyun say something wrong? It was closer to an insult than a term of endearment, but in retrospect it was still a weird thing to say. He metaphorically shakes off the strange atmosphere by pushing past Chanyeol’s shoulders to descend the stairs two at a time. He drapes the forget-me-nots in a place of honor on the counter, right where he can see them, out of reach from the fading sunlight.

From behind, Chanyeol says, “Hey Linkin Bark, do you want a treat?” and the night continues as normal.

Hours later, when they’re curling up under the new blanket and relishing in its softness, Baekhyun rolls over to press the backs of his hands against Chanyeol’s spine. He knows Chanyeol is awake and tracing patterns into the sheet. He waits, holding his breath, for a retaliation. Neither of them move. 

Eventually Baekhyun falls asleep like that, touching Chanyeol but just out of reach.

Their third excursion outside ends in blood. Three zombies burst from a fast food joint across the park, drawn by Chanyeol’s pained outburst when he nicked his own palm on the stake, and Baekhyun performs a particularly acrobatic jump with the katana. He slices. He hacks. He fights until three lumps are soaking into the grass and Chanyeol is squeezing his forearm hard enough to hurt.

“More are coming.” Chanyeol trips on the stake stepping backward, trying to drag Baekhyun away from the scene of the assault.

Baekhyun is buzzing. He looks up. Two more are indeed ambling through the trees in their direction, noses up, trailing peeling skin from their bare feet. 

“I can take them.” He shucks the backpack off his shoulders. Precious dirt crumbles from the open pocket. 

Chanyeol freezes. “What?”

“I got this.”

“We’re fast enough to make it home, come on.”

But Baekhyun doesn’t care. He’s locked onto a target. The smaller one, hair down to her waist, is clutching one muddy arm to her scabbing chest. He feels feverish and strange. 

“Baekhyun, please — ” Chanyeol pulls his forearm,  _ hard _ , and they both wobble backwards. His whole center of gravity is thrown off.

“Get off.” Baekhyun shoves Chanyeol with the intent to push him away and out of the casualty zone, but Chanyeol’s shoulder collides with a tree.

Baekhyun feels the tiniest bubble of guilt burst inside him. Shit, he shouldn’t have pushed Chanyeol. But he needs this fight. Two more zombies are nothing but good practice, and the adrenaline has him feeling better than he has in weeks.

They descend like demons. Mindless and cruel. Baekhyun takes the first one down. He narrowly avoids the man’s teeth, aimed at his waist, and nicks away at the exposed neck. It’s a closer fight — he dodges and waits and strikes all over again before landing a hit to the chest. 

He’s twitching. From adrenaline or fear, he can’t tell, and he’s not sure there’s a difference. Baekhyun blinks and the world refocuses. The skin between his fingers is sticky and he feels a post-possession grogginess. Why did he just  _ do  _ that? Going out of his way to kill — what was the point?

The katana falls from his hands. “Fucking  _ shit _ .”

“Happy now?” Chanyeol picks up the bag of dirt lying in the grass. He has a bitter twist to his face. 

“I just — ” Baekhyun is uncharacteristically lost for words. 

“Wanted to. I get it.” Chanyeol turns and starts walking back to the convenience store. “Desperate people justify desperate measures.”

He wants to defend himself, but Baekhyun is distracted by a noise across the park. He squints. Two streets away, between two looming apartment complexes, the shadows are stirring…

Baekhyun picks up the katana. “Chanyeol,  _ run _ !”

“Oh, you’re urgent now,” Chanyeol says with feeling. He glances back, but Baekhyun is reaching out to take one of the dirt bags and surpassing him in the same step.

“I’m not fucking kidding,  _ go _ .”

He sprints. He doesn’t look back because he can hear Chanyeol’s footsteps pound over the grass, then the concrete, then the asphalt, but below that he hears a distant throaty croak. A sound of hunger. The horde is coming. 

When he gets to the ladder, Baekhyun throws himself upward heedless of his slippery palms. His lungs are on fire. He hops the railing and drags Chanyeol up the last step by the straps on his pack.

The horde is rounding into the alley now, and it’s like nothing Baekhyun has ever seen up close. Swarming down their quaint street are horrific, bloody harbingers of death. A thousand mouths seek their flesh. The deepest circle of hell has spat its rats onto the Earth.

“Pull up the ladder.” Chanyeol tosses his bag across the roof. Sweat sticks hair to his forehead and he doesn’t fix it. “Pull it up, quick!”

“Can we — does it pull up?”

“Try,” he grunts, pulling with both hands at the ladder rails. 

Baekhyun falls on his knees beside Chanyeol and helps him tug. The metal ladder inches reluctantly upward as they feel tension on the rungs below. Baekhyun can’t bear to look.

Chanyeol pulls harder, peering over the railing to the alley below. “They can’t climb it,” he gasps, hands flapping for metal clasps on the railing. “They’re stuck.”

They secure the ladder at the fourth rung. It sticks up, disproportionate to the rest of the roof, and Baekhyun makes a beeline for the door.

“Inside, inside,” he calls, holding it open for Chanyeol.

Even from a distance away, Baekhyun can see how wide Chanyeol’s eyes are. The whites are stark against his flushed cheeks and black hair. He looks, petrified, into the heart of the swarm. He brings a hand to his own soft mouth.

“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun says, quieter, remembering the first time he saw the horde himself. “We’re safe up here. Get inside.”

He lurches away from the edge. Eyes passing blankly over Baekhyun, he walks all the way to the first floor, and Baekhyun follows. The stale air is familiar and calming, but gathering clouds have plunged the space into murkiness and uncertainty. Chanyeol takes a shaky breath and leans against the counter with his eyes closed.

Baekhyun lays the katana on an empty shelf. His eyes are drawn to Chanyeol’s knee. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s fine. Doesn’t hurt.”

Suddenly Baekhyun is breathless. He kneels in front of Chanyeol, fingers pressed to the burgeoning red on his pants, working underneath the ripped edges to feel at his skin. Where is the blood coming from?

Chanyeol jerks back. “What are you doing?”

“Were you bitten?” Baekhyun’s voice bubbles forth, a little hysterical. “ _ Were you bitten _ ?”

“No, I tripped, they didn’t even get close.”

Baekhyun sits back and sighs. He presses both palms to his eyelids and marinates in the darkness of the room, unmoving, until his heart rate decreases. Chanyeol is safe. They’re both safe.

Then there’s a shuffling sound. Baekhyun opens his eyes to see Chanyeol sliding to the floor and shimmying his pants off.

“What are  _ you  _ doing?” Baekhyun scooches back in alarm. This is unexpected. Not totally unwelcome, but — 

“Cleaning my leg.” Chanyeol tosses the soiled jeans onto the counter. He narrowly misses the drying forget-me-nots. His eyes flash to Baekhyun’s face and away. “Relax. Can you pass me the water bucket?”

He’s still shaken and unpleased. Baekhyun can tell. He reaches gingerly for the water bucket. Two inches of rainwater and dew swirl at the bottom. A dirty rag hangs off the side. Baekhyun finds the cleanest corner, dips it in the water, and sets about rubbing away the drying blood on Chanyeol’s knee himself. 

That’s when Linkin Bark deems it necessary to wake from her slumber. She ambles over, nose to the ground, and sniffs along Chanyeol’s body in curiosity. The lines on his face immediately soften. Baekhyun pretends not to stare. 

“Hey, girl,” Chanyeol murmurs, and the charming, popstar persona returns. He rubs Linkin Bark’s head. Their relationship is still somewhat unfathomable to Baekhyun — he’s never had a dog, okay? At least he can admit she’s cute to watch. Even if she pees on the katana sometimes.

Baekhyun ducks his head and resumes cleaning the wound. It’s not deep, just a scrape, but any blood lost is a detriment to Chanyeol’s immune system. They can’t afford to battle an infection or illness. 

With one hand wrapped around Chanyeol’s thigh, Baekhyun becomes suddenly conscious of how intimate they are right now. He’s sitting in between Chanyeol’s legs. If he turned his face and leaned in, they would be kissing. He feels heat rise in his neck and face. What a stupid, immoral thought. It doesn’t matter how gorgeous Chanyeol is. They’re post-apocalyptic partners. He can’t screw that up.

Not to mention his  _ dead boyfriend _ . Would that be cheating? Is Baekhyun being unfaithful to Kyungsoo by thinking about Chanyeol? Does he only want Chanyeol because he’s the last human being on Earth?

Baekhyun overthinks himself into nausea. He drops the rag back into the water with a wet splat. “Done. That’s better.”

“Thanks.” Chanyeol slides his legs in and sits cross-legged. “How are you feeling?”

“I — ” Baekhyun retracts his hands from the bucket. Were his thoughts obvious on his face? “What?”

“After the fight. You were a little deranged.”

“Oh,” he says, remembering the bitter expression on Chanyeol’s face, the unhappy pucker of his lip, the dull thud when his shoulder hit the tree. Nausea battles with shame in his gut.

Baekhyun brushes his hair out of his eyes so he can  _ really  _ look at Chanyeol and say, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No. I put you in danger.”

Chanyeol leans forward and touches Baekhyun’s arm. “And yourself. It was a mistake. Just — please don’t do it again.”

There’s something raw in his voice that hurts Baekhyun. He did that. He hurt the one person left in his life, and more than that, he hurt  _ Chanyeol _ , the human embodiment of sunshine.

“I don’t want to lose myself,” he admits, gaze falling to his own hands. He doesn’t recognize the memory of himself, insisting on a fight. He is scared. Actually, he’s terrified.

Chanyeol sighs. “Not to sound like a broken record, but have you tried finding an emotional outlet? Like the letters?”

Baekhyun considers it. He really does. Imagining the pen on paper, the contents of his secret little box exploding forth, bleeding and smearing ash all over the paper… 

“Maybe not letters,” he says. “Maybe something a little less personal.”

Then Chanyeol sits up properly. A smile starts on his face. “Do you want to learn guitar?”

“Uh. Sure?”

“Great! I’ll bring her downstairs.”

In the next moment, he’s gone, and Baekhyun is left befuddled and dangerously hopeful in front of the water bucket. Chanyeol is endlessly patient with him. Even if he’s broken for the rest of this hellish journey, Chanyeol won’t hate him.

He ducks his head to hide his smile. When Chanyeol returns, they sit shoulder-to-shoulder against the counter and Baekhyun concentrates on cradling the beautiful wooden beast like he’s seen so many times before, in person and on camera.

Chanyeol teaches him the opening chords to a Hozier song, NFWMB, and softly sings along.

_ ain't it warming you, the world goin' up in flames? / ain't it the life of you, you're lighting up the place? / nothing fucks with my baby... _

  
  


“One mission left in Operation Martian.”

Chanyeol crosses his arms and leans against the railing. A gentle wind tosses his curls. “Okay.”

Baekhyun uses the stake to gesture toward the dirtbox, which has grown into a sizeable square of farmable land. The sun beams happily over the roof, warming its nooks and crannies, and spring is on the palate. 

“We’re ready to plant. We just need seeds.”

“Where do we get seeds? The home goods store is uptown — ”

“Too far.” Baekhyun twirls the stake like it’s a katana, glancing past Chanyeol at the skyscrapers. “We can go to my old apartment.”

Chanyeol raises his eyebrows. “You have seeds at your apartment?”

“ _ Floral Management _ ,” Baekhyun says with feeling. “Also, Kyungsoo was a farming student.”

It takes Chanyeol a second to digest that information. He spins around, hands on the railing, and peers over the city. He looks strikingly like a king surveying his kingdom. Baekhyun always thought of himself as royalty up here, a king among clouds, but Chanyeol with his noble profile easily bests him. 

Weeks ago, when Baekhyun first started staring at his apartment from the roof of the convenience store, he never dreamed he’d go back. But he trusts Chanyeol. He believes in him, in  _ them _ , in their partnership and determination.

Chanyeol scans the high-rises. “Which one is your apartment?”

Baekhyun points.

“Not too shabby,” he says, then turns around with a somber furrow of his brows. “I think you should give me directions and I should go alone.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Chanyeol bites his lip and counters. “Are you emotionally ready to ransack your old apartment?”

Well,  _ no _ , but that won’t stop him. Baekhyun crosses his arms and tries to gauge how genuine Chanyeol is. “This is life or death. We need those seeds. My feelings don’t matter.”

“Yeah, you’ve been wrong about that since day one.”

“So what.” Baekhyun flounders for an argument. “We agreed not to leave each other. Right?”

“After what happened last time, I doubt you’re stable enough to make it three blocks. You’re a danger to us both.” Chanyeol takes his arm and keeps his voice soft, so there’s no room for misunderstanding — this is a plea. He has a game plan. “Just do one thing to prove to me that you’re managing your own health.”

“What?”

Chanyeol grins. “Serenade me.”

Baekhyun shoves him back into the railing. “Jesus fuck. I thought this was  _ serious _ , Chanyeol.”

“I am serious! Sing to me, Baekhyun. Seduce me with your strong tenor.”

“I hate you.”

He tries to move away but Chanyeol’s grip tightens on his arm. They’re both on the edge of laughter, though Baekhyun is exasperated, and Chanyeol is smiling when he says, “Any song. Your choice. I’ll accompany you.”

“Will you get off my balls about being emotionally ready?”

“Yup,” he says, popping the  _ p _ , and Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “You might even get off your own balls. I mean, emotionally. Not like, orgasmically.”

“Fine.”

Their rooftop afternoon becomes a karaoke evening, with Baekhyun singing RADWIMPS at the top of his lungs, arms stretched over the railing and imagining the skyscrapers as his adoring audience. He gets really into it, actually. He surprises himself with the amount of lyrics he remembers

Chanyeol is absolutely delighted. He dances along, playing the air guitar and tapping his feet, with a smile splitting his face. 

This feels like their first spar all over again. They’re in sync, moving to the music of Baekhyun’s voice and screwing around on the roof with no care for the world or its worries. A refreshing lightness takes hold of his chest. This is exactly how a college kid should be spending his free time. He feels  _ normal _ .

Baekhyun finishes the song and bows over the railing. Breathless, he turns back and grins at Chanyeol. “Happy?”

“Can I have your autograph?” Chanyeol leans against the opposite railing and braces both hands on his knees, out of breath. “Will you take a picture with me? My number is three-six-five — ”

“Yeah? Grab your phone. If it turns on I’ll send you nudes.”

Chanyeol pulls an exaggerated frown. “Unrealistic.” He points at Baekhyun. “ _ You  _ said it, though. If I find a generator, I’ll be expecting photos.”

Baekhyun stalks over to pinch Chanyeol in the crease of his elbow. “I don’t think so, pretty boy.”

“You’re right. Soliciting minors for pornography is super illegal and I don’t support that _._ ”

“I’m  _ nineteen _ !”

Baekhyun pinches harder this time. Chanyeol keels over, howling, and throws himself over the dirtbox to escape. His nose wrinkles. 

“Linkin Barky!” He calls toward the open door. “Save me!”

Baekhyun scuttles inside and shuts the door. He’s laughing as his feet pound down the staircase, still laughing as he tosses himself in bed and generates the shape of innocence among the sheets. Linkin Bark, startled by his sharp movements, sits up in the corner.

Oh,  _ that  _ would be the perfect tease. Baekhyun grabs the dog and bundles them both underneath the blanket just as Chanyeol slams open the door. He stops dead midway down the spiral staircase, eyes wide.

He points at the dog, who appears to be cuddling into Baekhyun’s chest. “Betrayal! What is this? After all I’ve done for you, choosing  _ him _ !”

“She says I smell better.”

Chanyeol tumbles indignantly into bed beside him. They talk until Baekhyun falls asleep, the dog between his feet.

They depart for the apartment the following morning. Baekhyun is paranoid and packs three days of rations, then hides three days of rations for the dog amongst the shelves for later pilfering. He might be developing a soft spot for her. 

Chanyeol notices, but he’s uncharacteristically quiet this morning. He lays both hands on the body of his guitar and says something, too quiet for Baekhyun to hear, before grabbing the knife off the counter and setting his mouth into a thin, grim line. No backing out.

Baekhyun spares a final glance at the countertop and the dried forget-me-nots. “We’ll be back,” he announces, flicking the fur on Linkin Bark’s ear. “Don’t be loud.”

“Don’t get eaten,” Chanyeol adds, cracking a smile.

“Don’t miss us too much.”

“Don’t sleep on the staircase and fall off.”

Baekhyun snorts, double-checks the katana, and heads for the roof. It’s a beautiful pre-spring morning. He can taste smoke but there’s no indication of fire on the horizon, only low-hanging clouds and their final destination: the downtown skyscrapers. 

When Chanyeol joins him at the railing to adjust the ladder, Baekhyun tosses a farewell over one shoulder to the dirt box. “Stay golden, boys.”

“Was that a manga reference?”

“Park Chanyeol, when will you understand that not everything I say is about  _ anime _ ?”

But now Chanyeol is smiling in the sunlight, eyes crinkled, and Baekhyun can’t help but smile back as they descend into an unknown journey. He might die on this venture, but he’ll be  _ damned  _ if anything happens to Chanyeol. They will reach the seeds. Baekhyun is too stubborn to get killed before then.

“I’m just projecting,” Chanyeol calls down from the final step. “Everything I say is about rock bands from the 2000s, if you haven’t noticed.”

He lands heavy on both feet. They set off down the alley, Baekhyun twirling the katana, exquisitely quiet and trepidatious. Sunshine can’t distract from the deadly potential of each passing shadow — he’s painfully tense.

They reach the park and skirt its edges. Baekhyun gets a good look at the student union and stops. Faint grey vapors rise from its melted glass dome, too short to see from the rooftop but definitely the source of the smoke-smell. He touches one hand to his backpack. If things were different, he’d be on his way to class this morning…

Chanyeol takes his hand. They’re too nervous to communicate verbally, but he raises his eyebrows at Baekhyun in a goofy, concerned way. A perfect distraction to his wandering imagination. Baekhyun holds on tight and tugs him up the avenue. 

The car windows here are also shattered. Odd, musty smells emanate from several engines. Baekhyun adjusts the katana to skate two fingers over one passenger door, which is heated by the sun and discolored by some previous altercation. Maybe a crash. The ghosts here are quiet, but he can see them — the busy street bursts alive in his memories, full of light and laughter, of people going about their fragile mundanities. 

Once again Chanyeol pulls him back, this time with a squeeze to indicate the front door of an apartment complex open and facing the sidewalk ahead. They cross an abandoned auto shop to peer inside. It’s dark and very quiet, so Baekhyun shrugs and leads the way past...

Only for a zombie to lumber forth, moaning, both hands tangled in her absurdly long hair. She’s stunning and tiny, in an awful child-like way. Baekhyun hesitates. He hasn’t killed a child zombie.

That hesitation costs him. The girl lunges and Chanyeol strikes with the knife before she can sink black teeth into Baekhyun’s arm.

“Holy shit,” Chanyeol gasps. The knife comes back red. The girl stumbles but moves forward, faster, hungrier than any previous foe.

Baekhyun reacts quicker this time. He swats her backward and sickly plunges his blade into her shoulder, knocking her face-first into the asphalt. He finishes the job and whips toward Chanyeol.

He’s frozen and staring at his own bloody hands like they’re monsters. His breathing is rapid and loud. The horrified twist of his eyebrows sets something off in Baekhyun — he wants to turn back time and protect Chanyeol from  _ himself _ .

“Hey,” he says softly, covering Chanyeol’s hands with his own and blocking the sight of blood. “It’s okay, it’s over.”

“I  _ stabbed  _ it.”

“Yeah, nice hit.”

Baekhyun backtracks and pulls him into the gaping mouth of the auto shop. They crouch in the shadows. Chanyeol collapses against the wall and Baekhyun shushes him as delicately as he can. They’re still semi-exposed. This isn’t the place for a breakdown.

But Chanyeol’s breathing is irregular and bordering hyperventilation. Baekhyun’s experience with anxiety is limited — his own mental health experience begins and ends with high-functioning depression — but he recognizes the signs clear as day. 

“Shit,” he hisses, tossing down the katana and squeezing Chanyeol’s hands tighter. “Shitshitshit. Breathe, Chanyeol.”

What would he do if this were an ordinary situation? Every breath sounds like a gunshot in the abandoned shop, and Baekhyun’s eyes skirt frantically around skeletal cars, looking for more enemies. What would  _ Chanyeol  _ do in this situation?

Baekhyun kneels directly in front of Chanyeol’s trembling body to eclipse his vision. He takes a deep breath and holds both of Chanyeol’s hands to his own chest. 

“Hey,” he says again, quiet and soothing. “Breathe with me. Nice and slow. We’re okay. Take your time and just breathe.”

Chanyeol screws his eyes shut. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry, I’m okay, we can keep going — ”

“Not yet. Just match my breathing, okay?” Baekhyun inhales and hopes his thundering heart isn’t audible. “In, out.”

This is the most frightening moment of his whole fucking life. A zombie could attack at any moment, from any angle, and Baekhyun would be like buttery steak to their teeth. But if he doesn’t stay with Chanyeol, he’ll  _ surely  _ die, and that’s not a sacrifice he’s willing to make.

So Baekhyun accepts the possibility of both of their deaths. He holds Chanyeol close. Breathes deep and slow. Thinks happy, pink thoughts. 

Twenty-odd excruciating minutes pass before Chanyeol regains control of his breathing and sits up straight. He folds his hands in his lap, eyes downcast, and looks absolutely wrecked.

“Sorry,” he says again.

“Don’t apologize. Not your fault.”

Chanyeol’s face twists like he’s about to argue. Baekhyun fists his hand in Chanyeol’s collar — a rather violent way to handle someone recovering from a panic attack, he notes, and adjusts his grip — to lean closer.

“It’s not your fault,” he repeats. “Are you okay to keep going?”

“Yeah.” Chanyeol shuffles back. He can’t meet Baekhyun’s eyes and a pink flush has settled across both cheeks. “I’m okay.”

Suspicious, Baekhyun appraises him from head to toe. Even if he’s not okay, they don’t have the option of staying where they are, so Baekhyun slides his hand down Chanyeol’s arm and squeezes.

“I’ve got you.” He tugs a wobbly Chanyeol to his feet. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Chanyeol takes a visibly deep breath. He clings to Baekhyun’s hand and wields the bloody knife with the other. Together they check the sidewalk and continue onward, slowly, stuttering, moving as one beast through the wilderness. Only thirteen more blocks until the apartment building.

  
  


This is the last time it happens —

Baekhyun wakes up to his alarm and a soft, unhappy growling from the body beside him. He smacks the face of his phone until it quiets, then curls tighter under the covers. The room is dark and vaguely cold. He returns his arm to the warm bend of Kyungsoo’s back.

“Get up.”

“No,” he mumbles, pressing his mouth to the base of Kyungsoo’s neck. “Tired.”

“Don’t be late. You have a midterm.”

Baekhyun groans. “I don’t give a  _ fuck  _ about Business Management.” He flops over and starfishes under the sheets. The reminder of his looming midterm awakens Baekhyun with fiery indignation. “Flowers don’t care about the economy. Why should I?”

A sleepy Kyungsoo is unsympathetic, so he sits up with the blanket bunched around his waist and says with a very deadpan expression, “Because you’re unemployed.”

“Thanks.”

Kyungsoo rubs his eyes and reaches for his glasses on the desk. Stretching his arms into the pillow, Baekhyun blows a stray hair off the sheets and makes a wish:  _ Please don’t let this midterm destroy my germinating career. _

He should get started on breakfast. Or else he  _ will  _ be late, and Professor Goh will hate him, and Kyungsoo will be disappointed, and everything will be awful and shitty —

Kyungsoo softly takes his chin and kisses him. They don’t always share a bed, since the apartment has two, but when they do, morning kisses are Baekhyun’s favorite part. He leans in. Kyungsoo is warm and inviting in a very domestic way. They’ve kissed a hundred mornings before, and will kiss a hundred more, and Baekhyun  _ loves  _ that. He cups Kyungsoo’s face and turns, deepens the kiss, opens his mouth and takes comfort in the pleased tug of hair he gets in return.

Then Kyungsoo slides back. “It’s gonna be okay, Baekhyun,” he says, voice still scratchy from sleep. “Whatever happens, it’s one midterm. Think about what actually matters to you.”

“Not Business Management.”

“Yeah. But botany?”

Baekhyun smiles. “Yeah. I like botany. And I like you.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Kyungsoo looks down at the sheets and scratches his wrist with one finger. It’s cute how, sometimes, Baekhyun can still make him blush. 

“You’re right, though,” he says, shoving back the blankets and getting out of bed. The sun is just breaking the horizon, and he pauses in the window to admire its orangeness. “I’m not thinking big picture. What actually matters? Not the class, but maybe the degree. I think the people I met here are more important. You and Jongdae — ”

He wants to say,  _ what we have here matters, our life together matters _ , but it’s seven in the goddamn morning.

Instead, he changes trajectory and says, “Yeah, the midterm is fucking meaningless. I’m gonna go ace it.”

Baekhyun struts into the bathroom. He can hear Kyungsoo’s snort through the closed door and smiles to himself. After a quick shower and a quicker breakfast of eggs and rice, he kisses Kyungsoo goodbye and runs to catch the bus to campus.

Then the world ends.

  
  


The door to Baekhyun’s apartment is already open.

Any remaining hope he had — of finding Kyungsoo hiding underneath his bed with a stash of rice crackers, of finding Jongdae guarding the living room with a baseball bat — it all falls away with a tiny crack of pain in his chest. He’s alone. It’s over. This is a goodbye.

The living room is remarkably undamaged. A vase of long-dead yellow tulips sits on the table. The ferns in the windowsill are wilted. All of the kitchen drawers hang open, disorganized and half-empty, and a terrible smell emanates from the closed fridge. But the furniture is undamaged. Before he can think about it, Baekhyun is crossing the room and opening his bedroom door.

As usual, the bed is unmade. Kyungsoo never makes the fucking bed. The air is stale and thin dust has settled over the sheets, but Baekhyun touches the pillow like it’s holy. Imprints of their bodies are still gently visible. 

He hears Chanyeol’s quiet footsteps, but he can’t turn around to face him. Baekhyun’s hand spasms into a fist around the sheets and his vision goes watery.

Chanyeol takes his other hand and squeezes. “This is a beautiful apartment.”

“He was really into feng shui,” Baekhyun says. 

He pulls himself away from Chanyeol and the bed. The desk is undisturbed. Review notes from Business Management rest atop doodles of bougainvilleas, half-empty Muji pens, and movie ticket stubs. Baekhyun knows if he opens the top drawer, there will be a stack of photobooth prints of he and Kyungsoo kissing each other’s cheeks and sticking out their tongues. He traces his initials gorged into the back wooden panel, then opens the second drawer where he hid stolen potato seeds as part of a game to challenge how long he could dabble in thievery amongst their shared space.

“I won,” he whispers, hand closing around the seed packet. Kyungsoo never found these.

Baekhyun tosses them to Chanyeol, who fumbles and misses. The slap of plastic on wooden tiles echoes through the apartment. They both freeze. 

Somehow, the comically frightened expression on Chanyeol’s face makes him laugh. Baekhyun slaps both hands over his own cheeks, hysterical and overwhelmed, as ugly, hoarse laughter breaks out of him. Then he’s crying. 

At first it feels like he faceplanted into the bed, but it’s actually Chanyeol enveloping him in an enormous hug. The fabric of his jacket muffles the broken, uncontrollable noises that Baekhyun makes, and he clings to Chanyeol with both arms around his neck. He shouldn’t have come. He isn’t ready. 

Long, heart-stopping minutes drag by where Baekhyun trembles in Chanyeol’s arms and tries to breathe. This is the first time he’s cried for what he’s lost. When he resurfaces, there’s a wet spot on Chanyeol’s shirt and a new softness in his eyes. He takes a deep breath. Distant clouds move along and send sunlight beaming over the headboard.

“I’m sorry he’s gone,” Chanyeol says softly. “How are you feeling?” 

He swipes a thumb across Baekhyun’s damp cheeks. His face is half-caught by the sun and every eyelash is outlined in gold. 

Baekhyun thinks about it. “Like shit.” 

“We can hurry. Just grab the rest of the seeds and go, if you want.”

This, Baekhyun doesn’t have to think about. He shakes his head. “If this is my last time here — I want to stay. Overnight.”

Chanyeol nods. “Let’s do that. I’ll check out the apartments next door and give you a minute, okay?”

“No.” Baekhyun reaches for his hand. Their fingers entangle. “Stay. I don’t want to be alone here.”

He almost says,  _ I already feel alone here _ , but that’s not true. Chanyeol is tall enough that his presence dominates, even in this world reigned by memory and grief. Chanyeol is bright enough to distract him. Baekhyun clings to his hand and silently leads the way to the opposite bedroom.

Kyungsoo’s door is closed. Unlocked. Baekhyun pushes it. He can feel his heartbeat in his fingers where they wrap around Chanyeol’s, and he peeks slowly into the room...

But it’s empty. He exhales a heavy sigh of relief and disappointment. The covers are unmade here, too, but the blinds are down and the desk is tidy. Familiar books are stacked, color-coded, on the corner of the black dresser. Baekhyun releases Chanyeol’s hand and kneels in front of the bottom drawer, because naturally Kyungsoo kept the seeds behind his underwear like a complete psycho.

He strikes gold. Carrots, radishes, onions, more potatoes, apples, and even a bagged avocado pit. Baekhyun digs out handfuls of seed packets and hands them off to Chanyeol, who arranges them delicately in his bag. Some have notes scrawled on the back in familiar messy handwriting. Baekhyun hesitates with the avocado bag and looks over the innocuous note.

_ 10 yrs before fruition. Peak output summer. 15-29°C. _

It means nothing to him. Flowers and fruits aren’t so different, but he and Kyungsoo shared no classes together, and Baekhyun has no idea which professor assigned these to memorize. He tosses the bag to Chanyeol without a second thought. Until his eyes catch on something else colorful amongst the drab black boxers. The last seed bag is printed with bright red roses. He pulls it gently from the drawer.

_ Steal this one instead. It’s for you. _

Baekhyun crumples the bag in his fist. Tears threaten to choke and scald him, but he ducks his head. No more crying. He  _ will  _ keep it together.

Gently Chanyeol takes the rose seeds and reads the note. He places them carefully at the top of his pack and sighs. “Sounds like he was really romantic.”

“He was. Exclusively for me and you, actually.”

“What?”

Baekhyun wipes his eyes and points to the opposite wall. He has the posters there memorized, but it’s been weeks since he’s seen them, and the colors on Park Chanyeol’s album covers are eye-catching. All three hang with love above the bed. The EP album cover, along with three promotional close-ups of Chanyeol’s face, rest adjacent. 

The absolutely flummoxed expression that Chanyeol pulls is  _ priceless _ . He stands and strokes the posters for a long, silent moment. But when he turns back around, he looks devastated. The broken pucker of his lips suggests he’s bitten them bloody.

“Kyungsoo was a  _ fan _ ?”

“Think that’s an understatement. He helped run a fansite.”

“Which one?”

Baekhyun uses the dresser to pull himself up and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Chanyeol at the edge of the bed. From here, he can’t reach the posters, but he can study them in closer detail. There’s a rip at the edge of  _ Hands  _ from the apartment move-in, when Baekhyun got a little careless with the tape. Kyungsoo was peeved at the time.

“I don’t remember,” he admits. “Something like Prince Park?”

Chanyeol hums in recognition. Baekhyun takes a deep breath turns to face him head-on, bracing himself to continue. He knew this conversation would come and wants to lean now into the momentum. He’s ready to explain everything. Maybe not about Kyungsoo, but about himself, and why he lived so long in a cocoon of denial. He feels raw enough to dive in.

“This is part of the reason I couldn’t talk about him,” he says. “It’s weird with you.”

“Because I was his favorite celebrity?”

“Because he loved you.”

Chanyeol looks at him with that wide innocence Baekhyun can’t get enough of. There’s something angelic about his naivety. His eyelashes flutter when he closes his eyes, visibly overwhelmed, like the rug’s been pulled from beneath his feet but he  _ understands  _ now.

“And out of all people to find hiding in a convenience store…” he whispers.

“Park fucking Chanyeol.”

“That explains the pocky boxes.”

The feelings from that moment come crashing inwards, delayed but no less mighty, as Baekhyun recalls the shock of seeing a familiar face after resigning himself to a lonely apocalypse. He got so lucky. He got so fucking lucky to end up here, breathing, with the sun in his eyes and Chanyeol carrying hope into this mausoleum apartment. 

If only Kyungsoo were here. But he’s not, and Chanyeol needs to  _ know  _ how much he’s loved, so Baekhyun walks himself back into Chanyeol’s arms, gets comfortable, and holds him.  _ He would’ve wanted me to love you _ , he thinks, and that’s the moment he knows he’s fucked.

“I’m glad it was you,” Baekhyun says into the drying fabric of Chanyeol’s shirt. It’s weird how not-weird their embrace is. It’s relaxing, and therapeutic, and Baekhyun doesn’t want to move.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not glad it was you.”

Baekhyun pulls back, but Chanyeol won’t meet his eyes. He sits heavily on the edge of the bed, but Baekhyun clings to him and they go together. The mattress creaks and dips until their hips meet in a valley of combined weight. He twists, brings one leg up, and leans in. He’s practically sitting in Chanyeol’s lap.

He relaxes his hold on Chanyeol’s neck, slides a hand down to his shoulder instead, and blinks. “What do you mean?”

“You deserved a long and happy life. Not suffering, not hunger — I just don’t  _ know _ , Baekhyun.” He leans further away and clutches his hair with one veiny hand. Chanyeol’s wrist veins always bulge when he gets agitated. “You’re special. Even if we met before, I’d know that. You of all people don’t deserve this.”

Baekhyun reels backward.  _ That’s  _ not what he expected. Chanyeol admires him, he knows, for the kendo skills. But this sounds like more. Like a confession.

Then Chanyeol shakes hair out of his face and continues, determined, with one hand resting awkwardly on his own thigh like he can’t decide whether or not to cling back. “I wish you hadn’t found me. I’m dead weight, and maybe without me you could escape and find someplace safe out of the city.”

The idea is so foreign, so unattainable, that Baekhyun can’t believe those words are being spoken aloud. He wraps his fingers around Chanyeol’s shoulder hard. The bed frame creaks when he adjusts his weight to lean in closer. Chanyeol’s eyes search his own and Baekhyun doesn’t shy away.

“We made a promise,” he says with feeling. “To stick together. Why are you bringing up crazy as shit hypotheticals? I wouldn’t choose to leave you.”

“You would choose a happy life with Kyungsoo, and I’d want that for you.”

“Kyungsoo is  _ gone _ .” Baekhyun gestures to the empty room. There are no ghosts here, only memories. Only past tense. “We’re here, and we’re helping each other, and you better be goddamn grateful for me because I  _ can’t do this without you _ .”

The confession spills into the dead air between them and Chanyeol freezes. Tense under Baekhyun’s soft hands, he shakes his head and smiles uncomfortably. Like he feels awkward.

“You saw me, I can’t fight,” he argues. “Or be stealthy.”

“You,” he says, stabbing his pointer finger into Chanyeol’s chest to emphasis his point, “are ridiculously fucking well-adjusted. Everyone we know is dead and you can still smile, Chanyeol, don’t you think that’s  _ important _ ?”

“I’m  _ not  _ well-adjusted!” Chanyeol explodes from the bed, dislodging Baekhyun as he paces the length of the room.

This pent-up nervous energy has been brewing, Baekhyun realizes, for weeks. Since his unnecessary fight with two zombies — that recklessness bothered Chanyeol more than he let on.

“I’m just as fucked up and scared. I feel the anger you’re feeling, Baekhyun, I’m not a saint. I just  _ try _ . To live a normal life. To heal. I’m just trying my best.”

Chanyeol deflates on the bed several inches away. They’re not touching and he doesn’t seem to notice, but it’s all Baekhyun can notice, the intimidating distance between their thighs. Weeks ago, Baekhyun leapt at the opportunity to see Chanyeol’s pain, to know that he felt broken, too. Now it just hurts. 

He thinks back to every suggestion Chanyeol has made — about the letters, the guitar, the songs. He thinks about how so much has changed.

Baekhyun scoots closer. “It’s working,” he says quietly. “You’re succeeding. I feel normal and happy with you.”

He feels more than normal and happy, but he doesn’t have the right word for how he  _ does  _ feel. Whole, maybe. Safe.

Then he has an idea.

“Hold on.” He lifts a finger to his nose.

Baekhyun shimmies under the bed and pulls out a long cardboard box. Inside is a remarkably clean keyboard. This is Kyungsoo’s half-forgotten lover. With both hands, he unboxes the instrument and turns it on.

He gives the top board a light pat. “She’s battery-powered.”

Chanyeol falls to the floor on his knees. “Oh, wow. I never thought I’d play one again.”

“Serenade me,” Baekhyun says, echoing Chanyeol’s sentiment from days ago. He leans against the bed. “Seduce me with your sick flow.”

Even though he’s choked up, Chanyeol laughs, and lays worshipful fingers over the keys. He bends over like he’s inhaling the keyboard. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“You fucking kidding? Kyungsoo would be  _ honored _ . He’d be orgasming right now. Please go for it.”

Chanyeol still looks torn. He glances around the room, eyes lingering on the posters, before settling into a comfortable criss-cross position. 

“What was his favorite song?”

“ _ Heaven. _ ”

So Chanyeol goes for the jugular. He plays, more intensely than Baekhyun’s ever seen, his entire body curving toward the keyboard like it’s an extension of his hands, his neck arched back and throat bobbing along to the beat. Notes spill out effortlessly and fill the space with feeling. Baekhyun closes his eyes and floats along.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the song is over and Chanyeol is crying, too, through a huge smile. Baekhyun wipes his face and bursts into quiet applause.

“Well,” Chanyeol says, blinking tears away and covering his face, “I hope he liked it.”

“Thanks.”

Carefully Chanyeol turns off the keyboard to preserve its life and goes over to the desk. When he finds a pen, he shucks off both shoes and stands on the foot of the bed. He signs his autograph, obnoxious and scrawling, over each of the posters.

“Why is your handwriting perfect but your autograph is shit?”

“It’s called  _ style _ .” Chanyeol caps the pen. He turns over one shoulder, and at that higher vantage point, his hair is awash with sunset orange.

When he hops down and puts his shoes back on, Baekhyun reaches up with one hand and drags him to the floor. They sit side-by-side in the afterparty of their emotions. As the sun sets and the room grows darker, Baekhyun closes his eyes. He imagines this apartment as his and Chanyeol’s. They can’t stay here — nowhere to grow — but for a moment, he entertains the fantasy.

He opens his eyes. “Okay. Let’s look for food.”

Chanyeol quickly discovers the neighbor’s stash of canned goods, wonderfully intact, and they feast on corn and green beans warmed over the lighter. It’s the best meal they’ve eaten in weeks. 

“If you could eat anything right now, what would you have?” Chanyeol leans back against the foot of the bed. 

“Meat.” Baekhyun rips into a chunk of corn with his teeth and imagines the smoke and spice of grilled beef instead. “God, so much fucking meat.”

“I’d eat lasagna. With an entire block of parmesan melting on top.”

Chanyeol’s eyes glaze over. Light from the flame flickers over his face and fills the room with a coziness Baekhyun associates with fireplaces, hearths,  _ home.  _ After the explosion of emotion earlier, he’d expected to feel exhausted and wrung-out, but this is soothing. 

Finishing his portion, Baekhyun takes off his pants and climbs into his old bed. The mattress is heaven on his sore muscles and he sinks luxuriously into the blankets. “Ohhh,” he sighs, wriggling in the warmth created by his own body. “Chanyeol. Get in my bed. You have to feel this.”

Chanyeol turns, wide-eyed and cautious. “Feel.. your bed?”

“Yeah —?” He twists around to look. “Don’t be weird. Just come here.”

Baekhyun can handle having a ridiculously hot guy in his bed who isn’t Kyungsoo. He  _ can _ . This is Chanyeol. They’ve seen each other at literally rock bottom, so it’s not weird to share a real mattress. Baekhyun would be selfish if he didn’t extend an invitation.

Slowly Chanyeol undresses and climbs in beside him, filling the under-blanket space with warmth. Their legs tangle together unintentionally and Baekhyun relaxes into the semi-embrace. It’s comfortable. He feels almost giddy at this unexpected privilege.

He brushes fringe out of Chanyeol’s face. “Think it’s time for a haircut.”

“Will you do it? I don’t trust myself with a knife.”

“You were great with a knife,” Baekhyun smiles. “But yeah, I can do it.”

Something tender and soft fleets across Chanyeol’s face. His eyes move up Baekhyun’s mouth and nose slowly. The distance between them shrinks when he leans in and Baekhyun wildly thinks  _ are we kissing  _ —

Then Chanyeol delicately blows on Baekhyun’s cheek and moves back. “Eyelash,” he whispers.

But the damage is done. Baekhyun’s heart is jumping wildly and he  _ wants _ . Sliding slowly across the sheets, he wraps an arm around Chanyeol’s waist and snuggles himself into the crook of his neck, all the while watching for a reaction. They touch in their sleep — but not while maintaining eye contact on a real bed.

There’s no need to worry. Chanyeol melts into the embrace. Enthusiastically he arranges their legs into a more comfortable pile, still touching at every opportunity, and wraps an arm around their shared pillow. His breath tickles Baekhyun’s hair. 

“Right now,” Chanyeol whispers, “I  _ am  _ glad it was you.”

Baekhyun smiles into his collarbone. “I know. I’m an excellent cuddler.”

He means to say  _ goodnight Chanyeol  _ but at the close of his eyes, the world spins quickly away. Baekhyun relaxes. He sleeps.

When the sun rises and strokes Baekhyun’s cheeks, he feels first for Chanyeol’s warm body beside him. They’re still bundled underneath the blankets, though Chanyeol has rolled inches away in the night, and for a second Baekhyun forgets.

He opens both eyes. Millions of dust particles hang in the early light. The room is unforgivably cold, as if the heater broke, and Baekhyun sits up in a rush of memory. This isn’t his apartment anymore. Right.

Baekhyun climbs out of bed and enjoys the novelty of waking up before Chanyeol.

Actually, now that he has a moment of privacy without truly being alone… he should say his final goodbyes. Baekhyun dresses, wincing at the harsh pull of dirt-stiff denim over his legs, and crosses the apartment into Kyungsoo’s dark room.

He leaves the keyboard as an island on the floor and sits on the bed. Curling his knees to his chest, Baekhyun closes his eyes.

“Thanks for the seeds,” he mumbles into his sleeve. “And everything else, I guess.”

He brings the pillow to his lips in a phantom kiss, then fluffs it. When he stands, the bed is returned to its pristine and dust.

Baekhyun remembers the past few months — metaphorically shoving his pain into a box and compartmentalizing every emotion that threatened to break free — but his decisions feel fuzzy and removed in retrospect. He probably handled everything wrong. But the emotional tsunami of last night has left him clean. Almost purified. He’s not healthy, not by any means, but he’s taking the right steps. 

Baekhyun raids the closet and dresser, filling his arms with clothes. Every soft sweater he’s wanted to steal from Kyungsoo is now his. Smelling the fabric makes him oddly happy. Too bad nothing will fit Chanyeol. 

Closing the bedroom door for the final time, he returns with his loot to see Chanyeol sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes and looking altogether disoriented. Dark, feather-like hair sticks up around his head.

“Hi?” He squints at the clothes. “You good?”

“Yeah.” Baekhyun strips out of his pants and pulls on a pair of Kyungsoo’s khakis. “How do I look?”

Chanyeol stares at his ass. “Umm.”

“I’m kidding. These are grandpa pants.”

“No, actually.” Chanyeol swings his legs off the bed. “You’re working them.”

“Thanks,” Baekhyun says, looking down to hide his fond and spreading smile.

He tosses Chanyeol an oversized black hoodie from his own closet and selects a few choice items to bring back: his favorite white shirt, two extra pairs of socks, two extra pairs of underwear, one extra pair for Chanyeol (the largest pair he owns), and, after careful deliberation, the photobooth pictures with Kyungsoo. 

Chanyeol exchanges his semi-destroyed windbreaker for the hoodie and looks with surprise at the neat mountain of clothes. “Are you ready to go already?” 

“Almost, yeah. Take whatever you want from my closet. I might have an old Naruto shirt that fits your shoulders.”

At that Chanyeol rolls his eyes. Baekhyun throws a sock in retaliation and hits him in the neck. When he bundles the clothes into the bag, it bulges at the sides and becomes almost impossible to zip. 

Chanyeol opens a drawer and bursts out laughing. “Boku no Hero Academia  _ briefs _ ?”

“Wrong drawer, asshole. Look in the top.”

The morning begins with a light atmosphere and, although Baekhyun feels like he should cry during this final goodbye, he doesn’t. He zips the bag. He fills his jacket pockets with miscellaneous, useful things, like a box of antacids, a pair of scissors, the batteries from the keyboard, and a half-empty bottle of water he found under the bed. Then he shuts the front door of his ex-apartment and takes a deep breath.

Baekhyun presses one hand flat to the door. He gives a little knock, like he might sheepishly do after a night out with forgotten keys. 

“Let’s go.” He turns for the staircase. 

“Wait,” Chanyeol says, one hand hesitant on the doorknob. He pulls a pen from his bag and writes in gorgeous calligraphy on the door—

BYUN BAEKHYUN.

DO KYUNGSOO.

Baekhyun touches the letters of Kyungsoo’s name. Then he takes the pen and scrawls Chanyeol’s name on the wall beside the door. Ink smears across his wrist.

“Good idea,” he says. “Thanks.”

Chanyeol shrugs. “You don’t want to lock the door or anything? Preserve what it’s like?”

“Leave it. I’m not coming back.”

So Baekhyun leads the way downstairs, creeping back through the foyer and opening the door into the street, where long morning shadows dominate the ground. The sky is clear and crisp, not cold enough to worry about their journey, but there’s oddly no wind. The street is silent and tense. Why does he feel like he’s being watched?

He hesitates in the threshold of the front door. Chanyeol’s breath skates over his head. 

“Do you see anything?” Baekhyun peeks beyond the glass windows framing the doorway. He doesn’t want to walk them into a mob.

“No, but I don’t hear anything either.”

“You’re right,” he realizes. “No birds. No — anything.”

“Maybe we just missed a group of them.” Chanyeol steps around him to check beyond the street. 

For some reason he thinks back to playing video games with Jongdae, sprawled half-drunk on his couch, paying more attention to each other’s fuck ups than their own characters. It was always incredibly obvious when they were about to turn a corner and discover the big boss — the graphics would shiver, almost anticipatory, and the music would change, and they’d both sit straighter subconsciously.

Baekhyun feels that now. He’s on high alert and can’t pinpoint why. Leaving the apartment lobby feels like a bad idea.

It takes a lot of self-control not to run back inside, crawl into his bed, and cry himself straight to the grave. But then he looks at Chanyeol. He can’t leave Chanyeol, and they can’t stay in this building any longer — the clock is ticking on spring and they need every moment of potential growth for the seeds.

“Let’s move quick.” Baekhyun clenches his fingers around the katana. “Who knows which direction they went.”

He swallows the fear and steps into the street. They walk quickly, silently, and after a few tense minutes Chanyeol curls his hand into Baekhyun’s. His eyes stay fixed resolutely on the street ahead.

“You okay?” Baekhyun murmurs.

“Yeah, I just—” Chanyeol swallows. “Have a bad feeling. Ignore me.”

“So do I.”

Chanyeol points to a glass front salon. “Let’s stop here?” 

The inside is raucous. The walls are painted pink. Baekhyun sets his bag on a white leather chair decorated in gaudy, hand-painted roses and looks deliberately away from the wall of mirrors. The overexposed colors make him nauseous. Chanyeol closes the door quietly behind them and smiles at the checkered floor tiles. Of course he likes it here.

“How long should we wait?” Baekhyun whispers, fidgeting with a row of designer shampoo bottles and casting his eyes to the windows, then back. He doesn’t want to be caught off-guard.

“Past noon? The sun won’t be in our face then.”

He takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

There’s a rattling sound from the back of the store. They both freeze. Baekhyun raises the katana and gestures for Chanyeol to stay near the door.

The shadows are thick, but Baekhyun can see the faint outline of a closet door. The knob is rattling, like something on the other side is trying to break out. He feels sweat bead on his forehead. The knob rattles again. Louder. 

When the zombie explodes outward from the door, Baekhyun is ready. He attacks before the lady in a torn hairnet can get her bearings. She barges shoulder-first into the tip of the katana, screeching, spraying him with black saliva. Baekhyun pulls the weapon from her skin, readjusts, and swings again.

She goes down. Heaving for breath, he turns to see Chanyeol—

Who is slumped on the ground, peering beyond the rose-tinted glass and tracking something moving far away.

“Chanyeol?” Baekhyun wipes a hand clean on his own shirt and kneels beside him. “She’s dead.”

Chanyeol shakes his head. “So are we.”

He points. At the end of the main thoroughfare, where the horizon becomes sky, there’s a blob of shifting darkness. Baekhyun squints. The shape is moving and growing closer…

“ _ Fuck _ .” He grabs his pack. “It’s the mob. We need to run.”

“We won’t make it.”

“Shut up.” Baekhyun tugs on Chanyeol’s arm until he responds, hollow-eyed and slow with fear. He remembers the way Chanyeol froze when the horde crashed against their building. “We’re faster. It’s only a couple miles. Don’t give up, Chanyeol.”

He shoves them out the door, dragging Chanyeol by the hand, and starts running. Their shoes slap against cement. Pigeons startle out of their path. The serene morning is effectively shattered. Chanyeol visibly grits his teeth and glances backward.

It doesn’t matter how much noise they make now, so Baekhyun squeezes his hand and says, “Don’t fucking look.”

“I know I’m the optimist here,” Chanyeol says, out of breath, “but I think this is it, Baekhyun.”

“It’s not time,” he argues. 

_ Not when I just started healing. Not when I thought… maybe we… _

Baekhyun steps on his own shoelace and trips. He lands elbows-first in the middle of the street. Asphalt grinds into his skin before he can scramble up.

Chanyeol skids to a halt. “Are you okay?”

“Keep going!” He bolts ahead. He can’t look back or his heart will explode. They haven’t eaten enough for this exercise — Baekhyun sees light spots dance in his peripherals.

He doesn’t know how long they run. He passes cars in every color with doors hanging open, some parked haphazardly on the sidewalk. Chanyeol stumbles over weeds and cracked pavement. The universe narrows into their ragged pants, their frantic heartbeats, and the shuffling undead at their heels. Zombies aren’t quick. But they don’t feel exhaustion the same way Baekhyun and Chanyeol do.

Too bad it’s a straight shot to the convenience store. There’s no opportunity to trick the horde. They can’t lose them amongst the tiny alleyways off the main road.

Or can they? Baekhyun surges ahead, too tired to speak, and guides Chanyeol with a touch on his arm to turn at the next intersection.

Chanyeol obeys. “Where…?”

“Lose them,” Baekhyun gasps. “In the shadows.”

That’s enough to convince him. They peel onto a side street. Baekhyun’s eyes almost flutter closed in relief; being out of the horde’s sight is enough for now. 

Then the nausea from earlier erupts. Baekhyun skids to a stop at the corner of two tiny streets. He leans against a brick wall and pukes. His body is crumbling underneath the exercise. 

Baekhyun’s head spins, but he sees Chanyeol’s shadow fall over his own. Warm hands caress his shoulders.

“I can’t—”

“C’mon,” Chanyeol says, smoothing a hand along Baekhyun’s back. His voice is shaky. “You’re almost there.”

Baekhyun struggles to stand and Chanyeol helps. They’re both preoccupied when the rogue zombie ambles out from a dilapidated doorway and careens mouth-first into Chanyeol’s back.

The street explodes into screams. Chanyeol bats away the attacker with his bare hands. This zombie is young and strikingly clean. He still has floppy dark hair and undecayed muscles. He’s quick. Chanyeol fumbles with his knife as the front lines of the horde appear like dark waves down the alley.

“Shit.” Baekhyun’s sweaty hands twist around the katana. He can’t get a good grip. He swings wildly and nicks the zombie in the neck — but he’s already locked onto Chanyeol as prey. 

Baekhyun winds up with his weapon, blinks, and suddenly Chanyeol is bleeding horrifically from the shoulder. Where did that blood come from? Baekhyun’s heart thunders in his chest and he swings again, harder, this time sinking the katana into the zombie’s back.

He goes down. Baekhyun tugs. The blade is stuck between tissue and bone. Chanyeol’s breath hitches and he wheezes. The horde is seconds away and Baekhyun’s tugging — tugging — he can’t get the katana free —

Chanyeol’s hands come around his own and they both pull until the katana pops free with a sickening wet noise. By then, it’s too late, and the horde is nosing at their backs. Baekhyun doesn’t dare turn around. He smells mold and blood.  _ We’re going to die _ , he thinks.  _ I know we’re going to die. _

Then Chanyeol shoves him so hard Baekhyun skids down the sidewalk, ripping open the skin of his knees. He gasps for breath.

“What — ”

“Run.” Chanyeol looks at him with big, solemn eyes. Somehow there’s a wisp of a smile at his mouth. “Plant those seeds and live, Baekhyun.”

Time slows down. Baekhyun can’t breathe, and he realizes it’s because he’s shouting, and he gets to his feet in time to watch Chanyeol be consumed by the dark, frothing horde. Broken hands rip apart other broken hands to grab at his skin. He falls into a shadow of bodies.

Baekhyun’s scream chokes off. His adrenaline sparks. “ _ Fuck that _ .”

If he’s going to die, he’s going to die beside Chanyeol, nasty and fighting. He charges.

For the following three minutes, Baekhyun blurs out. He remembers a burning sensation in his arms and knees, he remembers gagging on the reek of a thousand mouths, he remembers butchering so many bodies that a ridge forms to block the horde from advancing, and eventually he tosses Chanyeol’s limp body over his shoulders to stagger away.

He earns himself a head start. He runs.

The ladder is slippery from the blood on his hands. Baekhyun has to toss aside Chanyeol’s pack to carry him up to the roof, and even then, he sways sickeningly on the penultimate step. He’s crying.

With trembling arms Baekhyun lays Chanyeol in the shade of the dirtbox and collapses beside him. All that adrenaline and miraculous strength rush away. Was he bitten? He can’t tell, can barely feel his body beyond the neck —

Baekhyun feels his eyes roll back, then nothing.

  
  


When Baekhyun wakes up, the sun is scorching against his hair.

That’s what he feels first — hot. He opens his eyes to a beautiful blue sky, dotted with fluffy high clouds. The breeze is gently stirring against his face. There’s a bird far above, winging in circles. Like it’s waiting for something.

Baekhyun sits up. That’s when he feels the pain, bursting at every joint, burning over every inch of his skin. He _hurts_.

There’s blood all over his new clothes. Chanyeol is very still beside him, and Baekhyun reaches over to touch the pulse in his neck. He’s alive. Unturned and alive.

Baekhyun cries then. He curls himself into Chanyeol’s torn up chest, where the hoodie is ripped to threads. The scene of his body is tragic — but his dark lashes fan over his cheeks and, somehow, he’s still beautiful. Baekhyun remembers thinking of Chanyeol like a king amongst clouds here on the roof. 

Every movement is a struggle. He grits his teeth, changes clothes, and retrieves the water bucket from downstairs to clean their wounds. He can’t bear to move Chanyeol from the roof, because — if he was bitten — 

“No,” he says aloud, squeezing Chanyeol’s hand. “You weren’t bitten. I won’t believe that. Just wake up, Chanyeol.”

There are no signs of bite marks, but there are so many places where fingernails drew blood. It’s sickening. Maybe if Baekhyun keeps talking he’ll hear and respond. 

“You might sunburn.” Baekhyun spreads a clean shirt over Chanyeol’s face to protect him from the elements. “What if I cut your hair like this? Ruin those popstar curls?”

He sniffs and touches Chanyeol’s hair. “Well. You’ll still be pretty.”

As Baekhyun bites into a granola bar, a scratching noise echoes from the propped-open door. Baekhyun almost chokes. He stands too fast and grabs the wooden edge of the dirtbox for support. Was there a break-in downstairs?

Then Linkin Bark appears at the top of the stairs, tongue out and tail wagging. She launches herself first at Chanyeol’s knees, and when he’s unresponsive she barrels into Baekhyun’s stomach, licking his clean shirt and shoving her paws all over his thighs.

Baekhyun catches himself breaking into a smile. “Hey, girl. We’re back.”

She doesn’t seem bothered by Chanyeol’s lack of response. His chest is still rising and falling gently, and the blood seems to have stopped, so Baekhyun leaves him briefly to feed the dog.

Bending over Linkin Bark’s can of beans downstairs, Baekhyun asks her, “Would  _ you  _ be able to smell if he were bitten? Animals have that sense, right?”

She barks. Heart twinging, he hurries back to Chanyeol’s side.

Night falls. Baekhyun brings their blankets upstairs and hopes it doesn’t rain. It’s awful, but he just can’t risk bringing Chanyeol inside. If he turns in the middle of the night, Baekhyun will be caught unaware in a closed space — Chanyeol will kill him.

Can he kill Chanyeol, if that happens? Weeks ago the answer was easy. Weeks ago, he didn’t know Chanyeol as anything more than a voice and a YouTube face. Now Baekhyun can’t even imagine hurting him. He’d rather throw himself off the roof.

He sleeps, restless and cold. Every scuttling rat in the eaves makes him tense with fright.

Chanyeol doesn’t move for two whole days. Baekhyun doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or relieved. He gets Chanyeol water every couple of hours, and on the morning of the third day he snaps. He sets down a full glass of water to pound his fists on the side of the dirtbox.

“This isn’t fair,” he cries, tilting his chin back and speaking to the cloudy sky. “Why couldn’t it be me? I can’t — ”

His own words come back to him in a rush of memory.  _ I can’t do this without you.  _ Baekhyun wants to rip his hair out. What’s the point of fighting to stay alive if he’s alone? What’s the goddamn point? Chanyeol doesn’t deserve this.

If only he could cry again. The tears have dried up after lonely, still hours. He feels dried up inside, too, raging and disintegrating and struck with horrible urges to destroy the whole rooftop. Fuck the seeds. Nothing matters anymore.

In a rampage Baekhyun stomps downstairs and throws open Chanyeol’s notebooks. He has permission to read them, and anyway, he’s desperate to hear his voice. Even in writing.

The words don’t register at first. Each entry begins with,  _ Dear Jongin, it’s been two days since the apocalypse… _ and continues with a rather perfunctory description of the day, including affectionate asides about Baekhyun himself. Sometimes there’s a cheesy joke, something Chanyeol would say with wiggling eyebrows, and sometimes there’s a long topical discussion of international politics and the destruction of the gender binary. He references people and places Baekhyun is unfamiliar with. These words, the truth of Chanyeol, shred him from the inside out. He doesn’t know this person. 

But he wants to.

Baekhyun turns to the last page. He holds his place with a thumb and climbs back upstairs to sit with Chanyeol under a low cloud cover, trying to enjoy the wind in his hair. He puts pen to page. _ Dear Chanyeol... _

He writes a goodbye. 

Quietly he kneels beside Chanyeol. His skin is still warm, and his breathing deeper, but the scratches are turning a dark color that Baekhyun fears means infection. He should’ve taken the bottle of vodka from his apartment. They have no decent sanitizers.

But when Baekhyun tucks the letter into Chanyeol’s hands, his  _ fingers twitch _ .

“Oh, my god. Chanyeol?” Baekhyun seizes his forearm. He leans over. “Can you hear me? Move your hand if you can hear me.”

The fingers twitch again.

Sun bursts from behind the clouds. Chanyeol’s eyelashes flutter and cast shadows along his cheekbones. Baekhyun inflates with a golden hope. He shuffles closer until his knees brush Chanyeol’s ribs.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is unrecognizably soft. “Hey, you’re okay. Come on. Wake up. Please, Chanyeol. _ I need you _ .”

Ever so quietly, voice rough from disuse, Chanyeol says, “That’s my favorite BTS song.”

He opens his eyes and shifts his weight, hissing in pain and shock, but Baekhyun doesn’t care. He’s alive. He’s waking up. The whole world seems to swell with light. He cups Chanyeol’s face.

“Shut the fuck up,” Baekhyun says, laughing in his throat. Burning tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He takes a shuddering breath. “Are you okay? Can you sit up?”

The last three days of being semi-comatose catch up to Chanyeol in one breath. His face contorts with pain, his full lips trembling. He blinks, rapidfire, like he can’t process the rooftop scene and Baekhyun’s face hovering over him.

“Do we have water?”

“Yeah, right here — ” Baekhyun scrambles for the cup.

“What happened?” Chanyeol coughs and chokes on a handful of water. His body spasms with discomfort and he struggles to sit up and drink from the cup unassisted. Honestly, he looks much less peaceful. But he’s awake. 

He’s alive.

Baekhyun has absolutely no impulse control, so he wipes his own face with the back of his hands and grabs Chanyeol’s chin — not gently, and his wrists are trembling. “You pushed me away from the horde,” he explains. “They attacked you. You’ve been unconscious for three days.”

“How did we escape?” Chanyeol’s eyes widen, searching Baekhyun’s face, and his hands come up to steady Baekhyun’s wrists. They’re in an intimate close-up position and Baekhyun just wants to be  _ closer _ . He relishes in the sound of Chanyeol’s voice.

“I carried you.”

“You — carried  _ me _ ?”

Baekhyun nods. His thumbs are stroking across Chanyeol’s cheeks, dry from exposure.

“I’m twice your size,” Chanyeol says. His voice fails and he coughs, reaching for the water, displacing the hands on his face. Baekhyun adjusts his position without moving away. He helps hold the water to Chanyeol’s lips until the cup is empty.

Baekhyun shrugs. “Adrenaline rush.”

“We weren’t bitten.” He falls back until he’s lying flat, eyes glazed and staring at the sunstruck sky. His whole face is open and wondrous, even as one hand clutches his ribcage, and Baekhyun can’t imagine the pain he’s in right now, but Chanyeol  _ smiles.  _ “You saved us.”

Again Baekhyun shrugs. He’s staring and he can’t help it. “I couldn’t lose you.”

Chanyeol reacts to that. He rolls his head sideways until he’s looking up at Baekhyun, mouth parted in surprise. “You’d be okay. I guess… being alone would be hard. Even three days is a long time.”

“Not that, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun shuffles his knees away and lowers himself on one arm beside Chanyeol. They’re almost eye-to-eye, and Baekhyun surrenders to the desire to brush Chanyeol’s fringe out of his eyes. His cheeks heat up.

Before he can lose his nerve, he licks his lips and continues. “I couldn’t lose  _ you _ . I meant it when I said I couldn’t do this without  _ you.  _ Not because we’re fucking stuck together. I’d  _ choose you _ .”

Chanyeol doesn’t respond. He’s looking all over Baekhyun’s face — maybe searching for the lie, searching for the emotional shutout he’s come to expect — but Baekhyun is laying himself bare. One hundred percent of himself. He plucks the folded letter from where it fell on the ground and presses it into Chanyeol’s hand. 

“I wrote you a letter when I wasn’t sure you’d wake up.” Baekhyun stands. “I’ll get you a granola bar, don’t try to move.” His heart races. Chanyeol’s silence sets his nerves alight. He fidgets and backs away, slowly. “Read it if you want.”

Baekhyun races downstairs to collect their daily rations and, after a moment’s hesitation, picks up Linkin Bark and the packet of potato pieces, too. He feels so much lighter without the fear of Chanyeol bursting into a feral cannibal at any moment. He feels alive. He takes the stairs two at a time and enjoys being breathless.

Chanyeol is sitting in a sunbeam, propped against the dirtbox, one hand pressing on his scratched torso and the other holding a fluttering paper. He looks up and his eyes are shining. When Baekhyun appears in the doorway, Chanyeol drops the letter and opens his arms, and Baekhyun drops everything to run to him —

Only for Linkin Bark to arrive first and careen into Chanyeol’s chest, knocking him sideways with an excited yip. He twists, making a tiny noise of pain, and Baekhyun rescues him from the overexcited puppy paws.

“Baekhyun. Come here.” Chanyeol pulls him into a hug. They sit wrapped in each other’s arms and victim to a wagging tail. He buries his face in Chanyeol’s shoulder and inhales. 

“Thank you,” Chanyeol says softly. “For not leaving me.”

“Thanks for not leaving  _ me _ ,” Baekhyun replies. 

  
  


It’s a gray and misty afternoon when the first green sproutling pushes through the dirt. Baekhyun does a happy dance around the garden edge and fusses over the irrigation pipes. Linkin Bark doesn’t understand the excitement, but she follows his energetic pacing, back and forth, tail wagging.

Chanyeol still has difficulty conquering the spiral staircase, so Baekhyun helps him to the roof early. He camps out in a lawn chair stolen from a neighboring apartment terrace and wields the mosquito racket for its intended purpose — because with the warm rains come hellish insects.

“Hello, babies,” he coos at the tiny stems. “Hello, my beautiful children.”

“Those are  _ my  _ children.” Baekhyun crouches over the pockmarked potato corner and sniffs. It smells like dark and growing things. 

“Joint custody?”

“Fine. Since you’re pretty.”

At that Chanyeol grins and opens his arms. Baekhyun falls into them willingly, snuggling into Chanyeol’s gentle chest and tracing the fresh scar along his forearm with one finger.

Chanyeol buries his nose in Baekhyun’s hair. “Are you cold?”

“Not really.” Baekhyun wraps his free arm around Chanyeol’s shoulders so he’s almost dangling. It’s an optimally comfortable position. “I just like cuddling.”

Chanyeol tightens his arms around Baekhyun’s waist. “Well, I won’t stop you.” He yawns. “You know, it really does feel like we’re raising children? I would die for those little plants.”

“No joking about death.”

“Aye aye, flower sensei.”

Baekhyun tries really hard not to react, but the laughter spills out of him like light twinkling across the rooftop. He pinches Chanyeol in the shoulder. “Will the weeb jokes ever end?”

Chanyeol only turns and sticks out his tongue. This lines up their faces perfectly, and suddenly they’re eye-to-eye. Chanyeol closes his mouth. Blinks. Looks down at the bottom half of Baekhyun’s face.

Baekhyun watches him react. The sky grows darker as clouds fatten and cover the rooftop in half-shadow. A gentle breeze ruffles Chanyeol’s hair and Baekhyun reaches to fix it without thinking — but Chanyeol tenses.

“Sorry.” Baekhyun freezes and pulls back, face hot. He doesn’t know why he’d be uncomfortable with an innocent touch, but he tries to shuffle backwards anyway. Hard to do on someone’s lap.

“No, no, I — ” Chanyeol grabs his waist. “Sorry, I just…”

Then Chanyeol lifts his hand to cradle Baekhyun’s face, so carefully and full of awe, like he’s crafted from holy glass. It’s like the way Chanyeol looked at the sky after waking up, but more. Sweeter. 

Baekhyun, honestly, is tired of being afraid.

He leans forward and kisses Chanyeol. Immediately Chanyeol responds, one hand tugging Baekhyun closer by the hips, lips upturned at the corners. His mouth is semi-sweet and eager, deepening their kisses, and Baekhyun is struck absolutely breathless.

He twines shaky fingers into Chanyeol’s hair. Baekhyun is clumsy, he knows, but Chanyeol guides with gentle hands until they find a slow and carnal rhythm. His heart feels ready to explode out of his chest.

Suddenly it begins — a fat raindrop, splashing into Baekhyun’s fringe, then another on his shoulder, and another, until it’s pouring rain and he’s shrieking, breaking away from Chanyeol and stumbling to his feet. Chanyeol is laughing and lifting his hands to the sky.

Baekhyun copies him and lifts both arms to exalt the rain. He closes his eyes. The water feels incredible running down his back. Joy makes him buoyant, and he spins in a slow circle, opening his mouth to suck in drops of clean, cool water.

Hair dripping onto his neck, Chanyeol sits back luxuriously. Like he’s poolside on a sunny day. 

Baekhyun almost laughs at him, but then Chanyeol says, “I love you.”

Something in Baekhyun’s heart shifts and blows open. A range of emotions tighten in his chest — gratitude, fear, shame, relief, happiness. Above all, happiness.

He steps toward Chanyeol and kneels beside his chair, ignoring the rain as it seeps through his jeans.

Baekhyun can’t say it back. Not yet. But he can lean forward and kiss Chanyeol, deep and slow, while the rain drums around them. That’s an answer enough. 


End file.
